To Set The World On Fire
by The Jollyginger
Summary: Brian never wanted to set the world on fire. But in a world built on ashes, it was sort of inevitable.
1. Whatever It Takes (Part One)

**_A/N: 'sup. After a lot of reflection, I decided to split this mega chapter into three parts. While I still think it flows better if you read the entire thing at once, I can't help but think that the length is scaring people away before they give it a real chance. So now the "first" chapter is actually three, easy-to-digest chapters. Read on, folks. I can almost sort of guarantee you won't be disappointed. Also, there's some minor grammatical mistakes in the first few chapters. I'm probably not going to edit them anytime soon, because it's a schlep, and come on. It's fanfic, people. However, I have learned from many of the mistakes my reviewers pointed out, so by the latest chapter there are none that I know of. _**

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><p>Whatever It Takes (Part 1)<p>

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><p><em>Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium. <em>

Each miracle of science danced through his mind , and he admired each one for a slow heartbeat before moving on to the next.

_Beryllium. Boron. Carbon._

He always recited them, in times like this; dad had made him memorize the entire table, all one hundred eighteen elements. He hadn't been allowed to sleep each night, until he had finished the entire thing, every element in it's place.

_Nitrogen. Oxygen. Fluorine. _

What was it dad liked to say? God was nothing but a scientist, overseeing one vast experiment. And the elements, the atoms, the building blocks of life and death; those were the variables, smashing and burning together in a quadrillion different patterns.

dad was wrong. God didn't exist. But a beautiful sentiment, all the same.

Brian opened his eyes, and stared down at the bomb.

It was a big 'un: the thing must have weighed close to five hundred pounds altogether, five hundred pounds of a machine which he knew hardly anything about, five hundred pounds of death gift-wrapped in a dirty metal shell. All he had to do was disarm it.

While the entire fucking town watched. A bead of sweat rolled into his eye, and he rubbed it out anxiously. Brian had never been good with people. Or rather, they had never been good with him. Either way, two hundred pairs of unblinking(or so it seemed to him) eyes weren't helping his focus.

"Could I get a little, I don't know, privacy?" he called, his normally quiet voice ricocheting around the scrap-metal buildings of the little town square.

The whispers began, as he had expected them too. Brian had good ears. He missed nothing.

"_What the fuck Simms thought-"_

"_...some dumbass Vault kid who drinks shit, pisses clean water-"_

"-we seriously lettin' this little bitch blow our asses sky high? I say we drag him out, let Stockholm put two in his skull!" This last one wasn't whispered, but yelled to the town; Brian saw movement out of the corner of his eye, as heads nodded and lips muttered assent.

Several gunshots cracked, and the crowd froze.

"QUIET!" bellowed Simms, the barrel of his assault rifle pointed skywards. "AND STAY THE HELL BACK! Dammit, we agreed to this, so disperse and let the man work!"

"What man?" Cromwell croaked from the front of the crowd. "I see only a boy, nay, a demon! He would desecrate all Atom's glory, would stifle the glow-"

"Shut it, Cromwell, or I swear I'll-"

While the Sheriff and the lunatic argued and the town watched curiously, Brian seized his chance. He had refused to take the mentats Simms had offered him that morning, though he hadn't told the proud sheriff; somehow, he didn't think Simms would extend his trust to a man who seemed hellbent on disarming the most dangerous weapon in humanity's history _au naturale_. No mind-enhancing drugs, no experience, just him, a pair of pliers, and a theory of how to disarm the monstrosity before him. No, not a theory. More of an educated guess. Well, not necessarily an _educated_ guess. Closer to a ballpark estimate. Almost a hypothesis.

But yeah, he could do this. Definitely.

_Neon. Sodium. Magnesium._

He stared down at the exposed wiring, looking for something, anything to prove him right.

_I can do this, I can DO this. It's just like the rest of the Old World tech. Just like a Pip-boy. Just like Andy. _

Andy, the ancient Mister Handy model that had ruined his tenth birthday cake, could constantly be seen trying to wipe down Vault corridors with Abraxo Cleaner, achieving little other than dredging a flowery scent over the grimy steel. Brian's job title had technically been Pip-boy programmer, and most days had just been re-calibrating old Pips whose owners had spilled coffee on their gadgets. But a lot of days, he was called upon to clean up after Andy's messes, and to tighten the bot's optical sensors whenever the rusty old bot had mistaken a Vault citizen for a particularly large smudge of dirt(this happened with alarming regularity). Sometimes, Brian had had to take the tin can apart and work directly with the wiring and circuits. Andy, and Pip-Boys, and most other Old-World operating systems, shared one universal component: Sensor Modules. The modules had made the world go round, in the Old World's golden age-and it just so happened, Brian knew quite a bit about the little bastards.

_Aluminum. Silicon. Phosphorous. _

He tugged wires aside as gently as he could, searching as patiently as he knew how.

_One wrong move. That's all it takes, and...boom. _

No use, it was no use. He stared at the two-hundred year old mess of wiring and the dozens of blinking lights, and it stared back mercilessly. What had he been thinking, that the engineer had be lazy enough, unsophisticated enough, to wire a weapon of mass destruction like a Pip-boy? He was debating whether to call to the town and admit defeat, or to skip a step by sticking his pistol down his throat and squeezing the trigger, but decided to simply stare at the bomb, and wait. Holy hell, why had he agreed to this stupid deal? The bomb blinked and sat still, every other second punctuated by a blinking light below the wires-

_Wait. _

He leaned closer, barely daring to hope. No. Surely not.

There, buried in a tangle of copper and steel, the size of a large man's head and the shape of a frisbee, was a Sensor Module. Despite the circumstances, Brian admired it; Such a huge module must have been incredibly powerful, a marvel of the Old World. And doomed to die alone in it's own metal tomb.

The Module was blinking, though; Brian had played with enough of those things as a kid to know that that meant something had clogged the toilet, so to speak. Some wires must have gotten twisted when the Nuke landed, and the command to detonate had been spinning in a circle for two hundred years while the module waited for that little spark of data to find it. All it would take was the crossing of a few wires by some arrogant fool who fancied himself a tinkerer and didn't know what he was doing(which Brian hoped wasn't him) and kablooey: no more Megaton.

His heart started to hammer it's way out of his chest. _Holy crap. I was right. I was actually right. _

A laugh bubbled out of his lips, despite his best efforts to strangle it while it was still rising in his throat. _This is the absolute worst time for me to laugh._ Which, naturally, also meant that it was the absolute best time.

The whispers fluttered through the air once more, but now Brian had no use for them.

_Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium! Goddamn right! _

The ragged lunatic froze and pointed a stiff, accusing finger past Simms and towards the cackling Vault kid. "You see? The devil laughs, he mocks us! I implore you in the name of Atom, seize this pretender and-"

Almost absentmindedly, the Sheriff slapped his hand to Cromwell's mouth, drawing an incomprehensible stream of fury from the Confessor.

"Moore? You alright?" Simms asked, concern twisting his lips into a frown.

Brian didn't answer. Instead, he kept laughing, and drew the pair of rusty pliers from his pocket.

"_The crazy bastard's gonna try it-_"

"_What are you waiting for, you've got a gun-_"

" I told you to STAY BACK!" Another spurt of gunfire and the tide of bodies Brian glimpsed in his peripheral vision receded a few cautious steps.

It was all over in a few seconds. Brian managed to stop laughing while the pliers tugged at the bolts holding the module in place, and then snipped it's wires.. Once upon a time, the bolts would have been beyond the convincing of such a tame tool, but two hundred years of rust and wear had left them weak. Brian, whose cackle had died to a mere chortle, tossed the useless module out of the useless bomb, and it landed at the Sheriff's feet with a dull thwump!

The town was silent once more, not with fear, but uncertainty. Simms stared, almost scared to blink, at the device. Cromwell tried to scream in rage from behind the Sheriff's hand.

Brian stopped laughing, swallowed, and realized that most of the town was armed, while he was not, and that about half of them had worshipped that pathetic piece of Old World engineering like a god-a god which he had just castrated, he thought, not without a bare hint of satisfaction.

He braced himself against the neutered bomb, ready to dodge behind it if the bullets started flying.

And then: "Holy shit, the kid actually did it-"

Brian frowned as the crowd oohed and awed. Simms eventually pulled his gaze from the module at his feet and stared openly at Brian as he approached him.

"Er...how much did I say I'd pay you again?" Brian, still unsure of what exactly was happening, answered deadpan

. "Nothing. I just wanted a place to sleep."

"Right, right...well, shit. Don't take this the wrong way, but I didn't actually think…"

"...That I would be able to do it." Despite his own misgivings, Brian couldn't stop a note of anger coloring his tone. "What, did you think I'd take the job without knowing what I was getting into, huh?" _But I didn't, holy crap I can't believe that worked, _the rational part of his brain whispered. Brian dutifully ignored it.

"Well, yeah. Shit, boy, you waltz in here, covered in blood from 101, can hardly string together a sentence, sleep on the streets, and first thing in the morning knock on my door talkin' bout how you can take out the Nuke no problem? I only agreed 'cause I was half asleep, and I wouldn't have if I had known all that shit-" he gestured towards the slowly dispersing crowd, "-was gonna go down. Hell, I butt heads with Moriarty enough without havin' to deal with Cromwell's loonies too…"

"Moriarty?" It was the first time Brian had heard the name-which wasn't surprising, given he'd been in town less than twenty-four hours.

"Nothing. Gettin' off topic. But nobody knows jack shit about nukes, boy. I'm still reeling from what you just did to that thing." Simms shook his head, a little bit bemused and mostly awed.

Brian stared at the older man expectantly.

"So... about my payment?" Simms blinked.

"Oh! Right, I know a house that's unoccupied, ain't much to look at, but it's a place to sleep. I'll just have to get the keys from my place." He turned and started to hike up the hill which led to his home. He turned his head and shouted back at Brian: "Good thing I gave you those Mentats, eh? Otherwise we might all be goddamn ashes right about now!"

Brian just smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. Not a lie, technically. "_Never lie if you don't have to"_ was one of his father's more irritating axioms, but seeing as how his actual father had made himself scarce, Brian found something almost comforting in the outdated ideal.

Brian stood alone in the middle of the square for the next few minutes, bouncing on the balls of his feet the way he always did when he was kept waiting. Some of the passing townsfolk flipped him off as they passed, while a few others clapped him on the back; but most simply avoided eye contact and went about their business. Brian had noticed that, in the few hours he had used to explore the town; People didn't stop and shake your hand like in the Vault. If a person was an unknown quantity, they were treated like a plague victim:with respect but never intimacy.

Brian had good eyes to go with his ears. He didn't miss much. Or anything at all, really. For example, he didn't miss the pretty girl at the Lantern flashing him a yellowish smile when their eyes met. Gratitude or curiosity, probably. Brian didn't return the favor; girls had never shown him any interest, and he had long since learned not to waste any of his own energy on them.

The pretty girl (Jenny Stahl, she had said her name was when she had taken his order yesterday) slowly let her smile curdle into a frown, and her eyes kept moving. The kid seemed nice, she thought, but there was something off in those eyes of his-they were the color of melting ice cubes, and twice as chilling.

Simms finally returned, a pair of keys jingling in one fist, and Brian took his leave after a too-tight handshake.

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><p>His new house was like most of the other buildings in Megaton, a two story collage of salvaged steel welded and nailed into a building. The hinges gave a rusty screech when he pushed the door open. The interior of the house was dim and filthy; where sunlight dripped through the holes in the walls, clouds of swirling dust motes danced, thick and fast.<p>

The house was sparsely decorated, a locker here, a holotape projector there, and what looked like

a kitchen in the back of the house. Brian examined the projector by the door with complete attention, which is why he just about shat his pants when he turned to see the robot staring at him.

"HOLY SHI-" Brian flattened his back against the wall and bit his lip to keep from screaming. It wasn't as though he were scared of robots- but the Mr. Handy model(he was reminded of the unfortunate Andy) in front of him was drastically out of sorts with the filthy, breezy house.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the robot began in a mechanically british accent, nonplussed by Brian's freakout. "I am Wadsworth, your robotic butler. I am here to look after your needs and to keep you happy and entertained. Is there anything I can do for you, sir?"

Brian's breathing slowed to it's normal pace after a few moments.

"Um...no. Thank you Wadsworth, that'll be all."

"I shall be sure to tidy up the place when you're away!" The Mr. Handy said, with just a touch too much enthusiasm to be believable.

"Great, you do that." Brian muttered, glancing around the room, and thinking that if this bot was anything like Andy, it would take a hell of a long time to get this place clean.

He explored the rooms upstairs; a hellishly uncomfortable bed, a desk and a cabinet, but not much else. As Simms had said, it wasn't much to look at but at least he wouldn't be sleeping outside anymore; this morning he had woken up somewhat surprised that he was still alive.

He walked through the house once. Twice. Three times. His legs kept moving when he asked them to stop. On his eighth tour, he paused at the top of the stairs. He closed his eyes, exhaled, counted to twenty.

Then he let out a scream, his voice as high as the sun(_92,960,000 miles, _went the voice in his left hemisphere), and slammed his forehead into the wall, before pummeling the stupid thing with both fists. Then he hit it again. And again.

Six times, in half as many seconds.

"I DID IT, BITCHES! I DID IT, DADDY! DID YOU SEE ME, DAD!? DID YOU SEE ME THROW THAT THING RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE COWBOY?! YEAH?!"

He finally stopped when he began to feel the impact from the first blow. Also, apparently bashing one's head against steel hurts. A lot.

He slid onto the first step, and buried his aching head into shaking hands.

His knuckles were purple, and it hurt to move his fingers.

By the time his blood had stopped boiling, his jumpsuit was damp with sweat. He didn't mind; yesterday it had been crusty with blood as he fled the Vault, and now it was cooling. Soothing, almost.

What the hell was going on with him? It must have been the adrenaline; surely that was it. His heart had almost stopped beating at the Bomb, and now it was exploding in his breast.

He had never felt more alive. The closest he had ever come to this-elation? Rage? Some queer mix between the two?-had been finding out he had gotten that one tricky question on an exam right, and that was nothing to what he had just done. He had walked up to a nuclear bomb, looked into it's guts, and pulled out it's heart. Sure, he had been ready to crap his pants the entire time, but...still.

"I'm going to find you dad...I can do this. I have to do this." Saying the words helped with the rush, Brian found. And for a second, he actually believed it.

Then he remembered that he knew nobody, had no leads, had no experience. No way to find dad. Disarming the bomb, building credibility with the town was certainly a step-a big one- but not the end to his problems. He had-he turned out the heavy knapsack he had taken from the Vault- fifteen caps to his name. That was hardly enough for a meal in this hellhole. His only advantage was that if his father remained in town, then Brian had most certainly alerted him to his presence, with that stunt with the bomb. Brian paced through the empty halls and rooms in his house, unsure of what his next step should be. Finally, he stopped and stared at the door. There was only one way to find his father; he would have to keep asking, searching for scraps of information. And hope that dad hadn't decided to skip Megaton completely.

"Whatever it takes, dad," he said, whispering even though he was alone. "I promise. I'll find you."

And on that note, he left the house as desperate as when he had come in.

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><p>The next few hours passed uneventfully, and unhelpfully. Brian burnt precious daylight chasing down strangers-half of whom drew their weapons thinking he was a mugger- and asking them whether they had seen his father. By the tenth or twelfth noncommittal response, Brian was only slightly disheartened. By the hundredth "maybe" or "I dunno" or "fuck off, Vaultie" Brian was severely tempted to start taking people at gunpoint and seeing how they answered him then…but he reluctantly decided against that course of action.<p>

Finally, one of the settlers, a man as gaunt as a skeleton, snapped:

"Well, I don't fuckin' know, do I? It's a big fuckin' town, Megaton."

Brian held his hands up in a pacifying gesture.

"Easy. Just looking for some help."

The skeleton man looked at him annoyedly, then turned to walk away.

Brian glared after him.

"Yeah, screw you too then," he muttered under his breath.

The man froze. "What was that, shithead?"

Brian paled. "Nothing! Just, ah, wishing you a nice day. Carry on...ah."

The man was approaching him slowly, his eyes two empty black holes.

"I oughta cut your throat, leave your ass in a dumpster…"

_I have got to be more choosy about who I bother. _

"Look, sir, I don't want-"

"Shut up." The man reached him, and Brian was keenly aware of how short he was; most people were taller than him, but this guy was at least 6'1, towering half a foot taller than Brian. He was also clad in some sort of leather armor from the neck down. If the man decided to hurt him, Brian wasn't going to be able to argue with him. The skeleton man stared down his nose at him, and Brian stared back, unsure of what to do. He could feel the skeleton's breath, a reeking combination of cigarette smoke and alcohol, scalding his forehead.

Yeah. That was _totally _why he was sweating.

Finally, the man turned back around. Brian let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

"Moriarty's Saloon!" The man yelled back, without turning his head.

Brian blinked. "What?"

"You heard me." Then the man turned, and vanished into an alley.

Moriarty; that was the second time he had heard that name. Simms had mentioned it earlier. What had he said? _("I butt heads with Moriarty enough without havin' to deal with Cromwell's loonies…")_

So who was this Moriarty, and what did he know about James Moore?

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><p><strong><em>AN: This is my first real story, and all feedback is appreciated. _**


	2. Whatever It Takes (Part Two)

Whatever It Takes (part two)

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><p>It didn't take long to find the Saloon; Brian approached the building cautiously, taking in the squat, ugly structure. The sign over the building reminded him of something from the Wild West books he liked to read as a kid. First Simms's cowboy persona, now an actual Saloon; Brian wondered whether horses had survived the nuclear holocaust. Maybe they were two-headed, like the brahmin. He chuckled at the image. The older man leaning on the railing outside the place surveyed him with curiosity, but Brian paid him no mind. He had a lead, and had waited long enough.<p>

He opened the door as surreptitiously as he could...and winced as the rusty cry of the hinges announced his presence to everybody in the room. The Saloon was mostly full, despite the fact that it was only about four in the afternoon. The scents of alcohol and sweat had stuffed the cramped atmosphere, and ancient lamps cast a yellowish, dusty gloom over every inch of the place. A dozen pairs of eyes watched him cross the room to the bar, and Brian felt every one of them burrowing into his skin...until he caught sight of the monster.

It was humanoid, but skinless, with necrotized flesh adorning it in ugly red patches. Most of it's head was a yellow skull, and two colorless eyes that must have been nearly blind stared from hollowed, too wide sockets. What was that Old World make-believe monster, the one that came back from the dead and ate brains? This thing could have been it's cousin.

The monster thankfully, didn't seem too preoccupied with him; it was too busy banging on what appeared to be a radio, which squealed static in reply. "C'mon, you piece of junk," the thing said, with a voice that sounded like someone had taken up the habit of chewing up cigarettes whole and gargling them rather than merely smoke. "E'ry day it's the same damn thing…"

The woman leaning next to it took a puff of her cigarette, blew, and said: "I'm tellin' ya Gob, it ain't the radio, every other station comes in fine, don't they? It's Galaxy News's fault, their signal's been absolute shit lately." She shook her head and walked away.

The monster-Gob- ignored her and kept pounding the offending radio. He(for the thing was definitely masculine in build) took no notice of Brian until he sat down at the bar, keeping a cautious but curious distance between him and the… "Gob".

The creature raised it's head to stare at him with those colorless eyes.

"Hey smoothskin, can I get ya anything? A drink, maybe?" This was punctuated with yet another smack to the radio, which belted out a mournful note of static.

Brian, bewildered, took a few seconds to reply.

"I...um...gah..What the fuck _are _you?" He regretted it the instant he said it; holy shit, what if this thing ate people?

Gob raised an-well, he didn't have any eyebrows to raise. But the flesh directly above his eye arched in an inquisitive gesture. One of the patches of skin seemed to crack as he did so. The whole spectacle was quite grotesque, really.

"Haven't you ever seen a ghoul before?"

"I...No. What's a ghoul?" Brian asked, unsure whether to be embarrassed or apologetic for this apparent gap in his knowledge.

The thing's eyes raked over the blue-and-yellow jumpsuit.

"Well...not all of us got the chance to hold up in a nice, cushy Vault when the bombs fell. A bunch of us got stuck out here, got a full-on blast of radiation."

Brian blinked. For a second, he forgot the weirdness of the ghoul's appearance.

"Wait a second. You survived a nuclear blast? And ended up...like this?"

Gob tilted his head, impatient. He glanced down at his shoes, then examined his arms, as if to make sure they were still there. Then he turned back to Brian.

"Ya think?" he asked, in a voice that probably would have sounded sarcastic if not for it's burnt raspiness. Brian didn't mind; his mind was on fire again.

"A nuclear explosion, which happened more than two hundred goddamn years ago?!"

"Unless there was another one, and I didn't notice. Look, are you gonna order somethin', or-"

"And this is common knowledge? Ghouls?"

Gob snorted.

"Tough to be hated by e'ryone when nobody knows you exist, innit?"

"But I can't even...I mean, the scientific ramifications of that are... like, an actual nuclear blast?!"

The ghoul shrugged.

"So? Bombs fucked everythin' else up, didn't they?"

Brian shook his head slowly.

"But don't you realize what this means? Who knows what else radiation can do that we didn't know about before the war? I mean, come on. How does it stop you from aging? Is it just some sort of mutation to the reproductive capabilities of cells, that only affected select gene pools? Or is it a trait unique to radiation, and it's somehow acting as an antioxidant to free-radical compounds, yet only affecting living tissue? Why humans and not other mammals, or reptiles, or any other surviving creature? Well? Tell me! Why are you staring at me like that?!" Brian finished, his hands suspended in midair furiously.

Gob was indeed staring, his...gob...hanging open.

"I… I'm not sure I...look, what did you want again?" He asked, desperate to steer the conversation towards something he could comprehend.

With a jolt, Brian remembered why he had entered the bar.

"Oh! Um...I'm looking for my father. He would have been here yesterday, he's an older guy-looks like me, but gray hair. Seen him?" His heart leapt when the ghoul nodded slowly.

"Yeah...yeah, I think I might've. Look, you should talk to Moriarty, he'll...he'll tell ya." The ghoul glanced around the room, suddenly uneasy. Brian blinked.

"Wait, you just said you saw him! Can't you tell me yourself? He must have talked to you, I mean, why come to a Saloon if he wasn't gonna order a drink, right?"

The ghoul paled-or at least, he would have paled had he still had skin, or blood to flush from his face.

"Look, kid-" He looked around again, as though making sure nobody was listening, "-I try to keep my head down, alright? Otherwise, most folks just spit in my face. And Moriarty? He's a damn sight worse than most folks. Ya get what I'm tryin' to say?"

Brian frowned.

"No. I don't. What's the problem with-"

"Kid." Gob leaned in a bit, and his voice dropped to a scarred whisper. " Ya ain't half bad, for a smoothskin. At least, ya don't hit me or nothin'. So I'm tellin' ya nicely, 'stead of just askin' ya to fuck off...Moriarty don't like it when I interfere with his business. And that," he said slowly, "is all I'm gonna say on the matter."

Brian stared at the ghoul. Something wasn't right here. No, a lot of somethings weren't right here.

"What does a bar owner have to do with my dad-" he began.

"GOB! You slimy fuck! 'ave you been talkin' my customers ear off again?" The man had appeared behind Brian's shoulder without him noticing, and the sudden outburst made him jump in his seat. His voice sounded odd; he spoke in some accent that Brian only faintly recognized. What was it called? Chinese? Australian? No, Irish. One of those Old World countries that was supposed to be dead along with the rest of the world. Brian craned his neck to look at the guy- it was the same old man he had seen as he entered the Saloon. Gob practically cowered behind the counter, terror etched on his ruined face.

"No, no sir! Of course not! He just ah, wanted to know what was on the menu!" It was amazing how high of a squeak those nuclear-charred lungs could produce.

The man's smile was bestial somehow, predatory. He leaned over Brian.

"Don't you fucking lie to me, zombie. Now shut yer gob, Gob-" He chuckled at his joke, " and apologize to my friend, here. And if I ever catch you chattin' up one of my customers again, I'll have Jericho scrape whatever skin you have left into a jar and feed it to you."

The ghoul didn't so much as blink.

"Of course, Mr. Moriarty. I'm sorry sir-" he nodded at Brian, careful to avoid eye contact, "-and I assure ya, it won't happen again."

"That's better. And I would be honored, Mr. Moore-" he put his hand on Brian's shoulder, and Brian stared into eyes the color of grass. "-if you would join me outside. I think we have a great deal to discuss, you and I."

"How do you know my name?" Brian asked. Moriarty's knuckles tightened on his shoulder.

"Word gets 'round town fast, kiddo...and what bartender worth his booze doesn't know the local gossip, eh? Come along, now."

Without waiting for agreement, Moriarty led Brian by the shoulder outside. The second the door close, Brian pulled away from the old man's brittle grasp and turned to stare at the bartender.

"What the hell was that?"

Moriarty didn't answer; rather, he slipped a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit one up, and took a long drag, staring contemplatively at Brian. Finally, he smiled, a yellow, wolflike grin that didn't make it to his eyes.

"Never introduced meself properly, did I? Colin Moriarty, owner and proprietor of this 'ere fine establishment, at your service." He gave a little bow, doffing an imaginary hat in one hand while the other clutched his cigarette. He continued before Brian could speak.

"Of course, you likely knew that already, eh? Well, soon as we've finished havin' this wee little chat, you can go back in and buy a drink, or two, or twelve! We're gonna be fast friends, you and I. _Fast_ friends."

Brian regarded the old man, with his snowy white hair and shrewd green eyes.

"I hear you know something about my dad...James Moore? I'm trying to find him. so do you?"

Moriarty chuckled, and took another puff of his smoke.

'Straight to business, eh? Works for me, keeps things moving. Alright-your daddy passed through 'ere, alright. Got what he came for. Left. You lookin' to do the same, well, maybe we can work out a deal."

Brian frowned.

"Deal? What deal? I just want to find him, that's all. Not like I'm asking you to pay my way…"

Moriarty laughed, a humorless noise sharp as broken glass.

"Oh, kiddo, I don't think we understand each other. See, bein' a bartender, the booze is only half the package-like I said, any halfway decent barkeep knows the word 'round town...and all the dirty little secrets hidden underneath. You would be surprised at the shite people admit once they're deep in their drink." Moriarty blew smoke in Brian's face, and continued as Brian coughed.

" See, information's a commodity, just like booze. It can be bought, sold, and leased. Do you know how many caps I make a week, just by not telling these idiots's secrets? Let me give you a hint: it's a shitload. And they keep comin' back for more! It's fuckin' brilliant."

Brian stopped coughing long enough to glare at the old, twisted man.

"You're a blackmailer. That's what Gob meant, isn't it? He was warning me to stay away." He tried to make it sound venomous, but it came out half-hearted; Brian wasn't sure he liked where this was going. Moriarty's eyes glittered.

"I'll have to teach that zombie to keep his mouth good and shut...maybe I really will do that thing with the skin. Bears consideration." He chuckled. "So here's my offer: You slip me a hundred caps, I'll point you in good ol' dad's direction. Pretty fair, if you ask me."

Brian felt blood rush to his face. A hundred? He didn't have a fourth of that. He wondered if he could rush the old man right now, make him give up dad's location; Brian had never been good in a fight, but he doubted this old bastard could put up much of a struggle. But somebody might see, and call the Sheriff, or just shoot at him. He forced his voice to remain level.

"I don't have that on me. All I can offer you is fifteen. Would you be willing to accept that if I promise to get the rest to you in the fu-" But Moriarty was shaking his head, grinning.

"No can do, sonny. Payment in full, up front, or you don't get jack shite."

"Well, you'd better help me find a job, then, because I can't pay you right now, and that info's losing it's value the farther away my dad gets." Brian smirked as Moriarty considered that. Then his heart fell when the barkeep suddenly beamed.

"Alright, then. You can pay me by doing a little favor. How's that sound?"

Brian didn't like the way that smile stretched Moriarty's face; it was worse than his wolflike, hungry grin. This was a celebratory smile, a satisfied one.

"What kind of favor?"

"Ah. See, this junkie bitch-Silver, her name was- borrowed a load of caps off me, said she'd score some Psycho n' Jet...party favors for the customers, y'know? Anyway, the bitch scrammed with the loot, tried to steal from me! Can ye imagine the bloody cheek?"

Brian frowned.  
>"Where's this going, Moriarty?"<p>

"I'm gettin' there, I'm gettin' there. Now, ye wanna find yer dad, all you have to do is pay her a visit for me. Is that a pistol in yer pocket, or are ye just happy to see me?" He snickered.

It took Brian a second to realize what the odious old man was suggesting.

"I...are you crazy?" He took a step back. The old man suddenly seemed much more sinister.

"Oh, what's wrong? Ain't like I'm askin' ya to whack Alistair Tenpenny, am I? Look, she's holed up right outside of town, in the Springvale ruins, if my source's tellin' it straight. Just knock on the door, whip out that gun, put one in her pretty little head, and the caps are yers! Well...yers to pay me with, anyway."

"No! Holy crap…." Brian turned, and started to walk away.

"Where the hell do ye think yer goin?"

"Anywhere else. I'll find the money some other way. I can't just...Maybe the rest of these people think that way, but...no. I'm not that desperate."

He could feel Moriarty's eyes on his back.

"How long do ye think yer dad will last, boy?" The barkeep's voice was as soft as poisoned silk.

Brian halted. He didn't turn his head.

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh c'mon, laddie. You've seen the wastes, haven't ya? Not like it's fairyland out there. Stockholm, the sniper, he came by last night. Said ye came close to bein' bug chow, that you'd be dead if he hadn't shot that ant down." The bastard was practically purring. He continued when Brian didn't answer. He closed his eyes, and remembered the terror of that moment, of the bug pinning him to the ground and snapping at his throat.

"I don't know about you, but daddy dearest didn't seem like he was in the best shape, did he? He's gettin' on, what is he, fifty-somethin'?"

"Sixty-two." Brian barely whispered, but it was enough.

"Sixty-two?! Looks fucking good for his age, don't he? Still, sixties' older than I am, lad; and for what it's worth to ye, I don't think these old bones would last long in that hellhole outside. We don't leave graves for them that die in the wastes, ye know. It don't matter who ye were, when yer bein' shat out by a Yao Guai." Moriarty was silent for a second, and Brian could practically smell him smoking, could almost hear his lips crack into a smirk.

"So ye say ye aren't desperate; but let me put it to ye like this. Ye want to see yer dad again, in one piece? Because there's worse in the wastes than ants and Yao Guai. There's a reason folks stick to towns, boy. Sounds desperate to me. So, do ye love daddy more than a lying, thieving, junkie? Or are ye gonna be a stupid little boy and waste my time? 'Cause we both know what yer gonna do, here. Ye aren't stupid. The question is, how soon are ye gonna realize it?"

Silence echoed between them, roaring inaudibly.

Brian turned around, and met Moriarty's gaze. For a second, the barkeep blinked-there was something so very off-putting in those creepy eyes-but he smiled nonetheless, victorious.

"Where did you say she was?" Brian deadpanned.

"Springvale, lad. It'll be the one house that hasn't collapsed. Just knock on the door, and..." Moriarty gestured towards the bulge of the ten millimeter in Brian's pocket, beaming all the while. "Easy peasy."

"And how many caps?"

"Four hundred, assuming the bitch hasn't shot it all up her arm. You'll want to bring a big bag for all that loot, heh."

Brian spared him one last disgusted glance over his shoulder as he left.

* * *

><p>It didn't take long to find the house. As Moriarty had pointed out, the rest of the buildings in Springvale had been leveled when the bombs fell. Silver's hiding hole stuck out like an amputated thumb among the former homes, dust and neglect and age beating them into ruins.<p>

The house itself was nothing remarkable, an ugly one-floor shelter, barely bigger than a shack.

Brian rapped on the door, and waited while sweat rained from his scalp, despite the chilliness of the evening. It was almost the night of his second day on the Outside. If he was really quick about it, maybe he could become a murderer before dark.

He heard footsteps, the creak of rotten wood, and just in time noticed the small peephole. He ducked to the side. His little ploy worked; he heard a woman's rough voice curse in confusion, The door cracked open an inch, and he could feel the intensity of her gaze as she searched for the strange prankster.

Brian closed his eyes for a second. Whatever it takes, dad. I promised. Hydrogen, Lithium...

Then he seized the door and threw it open, drawing his pistol from his pocket as he did. It was heavy, awkward in his hands.

"SHIT!" A voice cried in horror.

It was all the warning he needed. He threw an arm across the doorway just in time to intercept a blur of color-he wrapped his arm around the struggling woman, and shoved her back into the house as he stepped inside. He slammed the door shut behind him.

The woman-Silver, he assumed- was dressed only in her underwear, and even that was filthy. Brian tended not to notice girls, but the sight was somewhat distracting, all the same. He could see where she got her name; Unkempt locks of platinum blonde hair dangled down one side of her face, hiding one of her eyes. The eye he could see darted wildly around the room searching for a way out, and she seemed ready to rush him again, her long cracked nails raised like claws.

Brian raised the pistol and pointed it as sharply as he could towards her while his hands were shaking so terribly.

"Don't even think about it," he tried to growl. It was more of a stammer.

Silver didn't care. She froze, staring down the barrel of the gun, When she raised her eyes to meet his, tears had started to turn them red.

"He...he sent you, didn't he? B-bastard!" Whether she meant him or Moriarty, Brian wasn't sure. Somewhere in her house, the radio played, some sort of brisk waltz by the sound of it. Silver sniffled, and Brian noticed the track marks on her forearms, on her thighs, hell, on her neck. Dozens of the things. He could have traced constellations, if he wanted to.

_Dammit, stop stalling! _The rational part of his brain said. _Whatever it takes, Brian! Pull the trigger and get the fuck out!_

The girl had started screaming again; slurring her words, too. Drunk? Or high? Or both?

"YOU'RE NOT GETTIN' A DAMN THING FROM ME, D'YOU HEAR? NOT! A DAMN! THING!"

"Shut up!" Brian's temper flared. "Just...just shut the hell up and let me think!"

She shut up...sort of. She burst into tears, the noisy kind, and despite the gun trained on her, collapsed into a chair behind her. If Brian had found her somewhat attractive before, the feeling was gone-this was a wreck of a human being. Too tired to care much that they were going to die.

Brian didn't lower the gun. But he adjusted it so that it wasn't pointing at the girl's head.

"Talk." The words came out level, rather than a stutter. That was a good sign. Probably.

Silver stopped sniveling long enough to look at him blankly, eyes glazed from drugs and red from tears.

"But you just said to-"

"I know what I said! And now I'm telling you to talk! So just...ok?" His hands were shaking again.

Her head tilted. "But...why?"

Holy crap. How out of it was this idiot?

"Because I don't want to shoot you. So shut up and...I mean, talk. About Moriarty. Why he wants you dead." He wasn't sure why he had asked her that; some niggling instinct compelled him to.

"Moriarty?" The girl's face contorted in fury. "Bastard made me...made me work in his Saloon. Doin'...you know...favors. For guys."

"Figured that bit out, yeah. Keep going. Why'd you steal the caps?"

She sat up straight as a ruler, and spat.

"Steal, my ass! I got sick of it...wanted out. So I told him to give me my share of the caps, let me go. Sack of shit agreed." She laughed, a lonely, dead sound. "Even slept wit' the pig to seal the deal. Mornin' comes round, and he tells me to get back to work! So I ran, and took my fair fucking share! Now he's sent you...knew he would. You're just a whole helluva lot uglier than I expected." She folded her arms across her chest, and looked away stubbornly, mustering some tiny burst of courage.

"You gonna use that thing, or what?" She sniffed.

Brian sighed, and lowered the gun.

"Where are the caps?"

She bristled.

"Already told you, not gettin' a damn thing from me! I earned that money, and I'll die with it mine, too!"

"I'm not going to kill you, idiot." As the words left his lips, Brian realized they were true.

_Whatever it takes, but it doesn't take...this. Not today, anyway._

Silver gaped at him.

"What? But...what the fuck were you wavin' the gun 'round for?"

"Shut up. You need serious help. Like, ASAP. Get to a doctor, or burn the drugs. Honestly, I don't really care. But if I'm gonna pull this off, I need those caps. All of them."

"I...pull what off?" She tried to stand, but was apparently too dizzy-she fell back into her seat.

"Lying to Moriarty about how I shot you in the head like he wanted, and looted the caps from your house. Which requires me to actually have the caps. So, where are they?"

Silver stared.

"You...you'd really do that? For me?"

Despite himself, Brian felt a pang in his chest. The girl looked genuinely surprised.

"Yeah. I'll do it. But I need you to focus, and tell me, now: Where did you put the caps?"

"The shelf, the really high one. From the left." She tried to gesture, but ended up staring at her hand, fascinated.

Brian reached, but was too short; he really hated being short, sometimes. He stood on a chair, opened the cabinet, and found a garbage bag, which bulged and jingled satisfactorily when he pulled it out.

Good. That sounded like a lot. He wondered how much she had already spent on the drugs.

"What are you gonna do now, Silver?" He asked, slinging it over his shoulder.

Only a snore answered him. He looked over his shoulder. Silver had fallen asleep, her drool glueing her lips to the table as though in a kiss.

Brian stared at her for a few seconds, then left the stinking house, closing the door softly behind him.


	3. Whatever It Takes (Part Three)

Whatever It Takes (Part Three, final part)

"Well, well... look who decided to show up!" Moriarty started to clap slowly. "What took ye so damn long, did ye fuck Silver before ye killed her? Not that I'd blame ye; beauty, ain't she?" He chuckled. The Saloon was empty but for him, Gob, the woman who was talking to Gob earlier, standing by the stairway, and a man drinking in the darkened corner of the room.

Brian didn't deign to respond, at least not before taking a seat at the bar. Moriarty leaned over the counter, eager to keep flapping his jaw.

"I'll tell ye, boy, if I didn't have Nova-" he nodded to the woman, "-to pick up that junkie's slack, and if it weren't for yer kind deed just now, well, I'd be out a lot of caps. Speaking of which...where's my money, lad?"

Brian met his gaze coolly, and plopped the garbage bag full of caps onto the counter.

Moriarty gave a low whistle, a vulture's song, and scooped a handful of caps, letting them run between his fingers.

"Ye did good, boy… I oughta hire ye full time. Seriously, though, what did take ye so long?" He reached for the bag.

Brian slapped his own arm over the bag protectively. Moriarty froze, and his fingers receded as though he had been burnt.

"We had a deal," he said, and to his surprise the words came out hard and clipped, much more threatening than anything he had said to Silver. "I held up my end. I want anything you know about my dad, now...or what happened to Silver happens to you, and I leave with the caps."

_WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!_ The same part of his brain that had urged him to kill Silver screamed. But Brian's heart was exploding, his mind was on fire; it felt almost as amazing as disarming the bomb.

Gob, who had been wiping down the counter while pretending not to listen, suddenly stiffened as though somebody had replaced his spine with a pipe. The woman, Nova, gaped, her lit cigarette hanging limply from her lips. Moriarty's hungry eyes widened, and his shoulders bunched, as his knuckles whitened on the countertop edge.

Nobody breathed for a second. Or the one after that.

Then Moriarty's lip started to tremble, his breaths coming in short, rapid wheezes-and then he burst out laughing altogether. Gob and Nova continued to be statues.

"Wha-what the bloody hell was that supposed to be?! Ye'll do to me what ye did to her...ah, laddie, forget grunt work-I'd pay ye to be my comedian instead. Holy shite, it wasn't even that good of a threat! HA!"

Tears started to pour down his wrinkled cheeks; Moriarty trembled with mirth so viciously that Brian was reminded of the holotapes of epileptic seizures his father had shown him.

"I can't even… So ye ice one bitch, and suddenly ye chew bullets, piss napalm, is that it? Ha, ha...what did Silver do when she saw ye with the gun, that made yer balls grow so much? Get down on her knees and beg, or did ye really make her suck yer cock after all? 'What happened to Silver happens to ye', ah, me…"

Brian felt his face burn, though whether it was from fury or shame he couldn't say.

"And what's stopping me from doing just that, exactly?" He let one hand drop to his side, where his pistol waited patiently.

Moriarty stopped chuckling, and straightened himself, before looking down his nose at Brian. He wiped a few stray tears away.

"I pity the young, really I do. Brian, ye stupid little shite... meet Jericho." Moriarty gave another chuckle, a stage laugh, and Brian heard a slight _chack_ behind him: the loading of a magazine into a rifle. Brian's shoulders turned to stone, and he resisted the overwhelming urge to .

Brian slowly turned, and his stomach clenched a fist around his heart: The man from the corner, looming over the rest of the room, dressed in filthy leather armor, levelled an assault rifle at his head. Jericho, gaunt as a skeleton, didn't smile or snarl from behind his beard. He simply stared at Brian, with half-lidded, glittering eyes that sat lazily in their sockets.

"You." Brian heard himself say, in a flat tone. "You're the guy that pointed me towards Moriarty." He looked over his shoulder at the barkeep. "I'm guessing that wasn't an accident?"

Moriarty only smiled.

"See, kiddo, yer new to town, and I can forgive ye for that. I know I come off...coarse, but I've a heart of gold. Honest. So let me tell ye how this works: Jericho? He didn't grow up in a precious Vault, like ye. He isn't a businessman, like me. His job's quite simple, really; If I point at something, Jericho hurts it. If it gets a big head, and starts making big, stupid threats, then he kills it. Isn't that right, Jericho? "

Jericho grunted in the affirmative. His eyes, and his rifle, never left Brian.

Moriarty leaned forward, and whispered in Brian's ear.

"And if ye ever disrespect me in my own Saloon again, Brian, well… 'what happened to Silver, will happen to ye.'" He slid his hand over the bag of bottle caps, and yanked it from Brian's grasp. "Understood?"

"Understood," Brian said sulkily. Moriarty nodded to the mercenary, and Jericho shrugged the rifle over his shoulder and returned to his shadowy little corner.

"Lighten up, lad," The barkeep said, his voice cloaked in sudden geniality. "Ye did good today, and I'll still tell ye where daddy ran."

Brian took a deep breath. How the hell had he gotten himself in this situation?

"Please. Just get on with it."

Moriarty snorted. "What's with the gloomy fuckin' eyes? I told ye to lighten up, didn't I? Have a drink on the house-no, I insist." He pressed a lukewarm beer into Brian's hand.

"I don't even drin-" Brian began.

"Yer dad went to Galaxy News Radio." Moriarty took a sip of his own drink, and made a soft noise of contentment, the purr from a wolf's throat.

"-what?" Brian blinked, cut off mid-complaint.

"Galaxy News, I said. Ye know, the studio."

"What studio? Where?" Brian's head was spinning from the sudden change in conversation.

"Oh, come on. Galaxy News. In the D.C. ruins?" For the first time since Brian had met him, Moriarty looked genuinely confused. "Three-dog? 'Bringin' ye the truth, no matter how bad it hurts?'"

"I have absolutely no goddamn clue what you're talking about. I got here yesterday, remember?"

"What, and ye didn't think to listen to the radio? I thought ye were smart, idiotic threats notwithstanding."

Brian felt his patience wearing thin. Thinner. Linearly thin, really.

"Of course I listened! Only two stations to listen to, one was nothing but static and the other was… a loop or something. From before the War." Brian rubbed the bridge of his nose. "And why the hell am I even defending myself to you?"

"I have that effect on people. It's me honest face, yeah?" Moriarty gave his wolf's chuckle. "The static one, that'll be Galaxy; their signal's shite lately, not sure why. As for that other station, boy-it's real alright. Enclave radio. Fuckin' lunatics, I say, but hell, if I can get that sonuvabitch Nathan to drink, well, I'll toast 'em all night long! Bastard loves 'em more than that ancient bitch wife of his, and who can blame 'im? Tits like empty balloons."

"What? I don't even know-"

"It's not important. lad. What is important is that now ye know where daddy flew away too, don'tcha?"

Brian forced himself to breathe slowly. He counted to ten, so that the red had time to drain from his vision.

"Why. _The hell_. Would my father go to a radio studio?"

"Fucked if I know. Middle of D.C., that's mutie territory. Wouldn't catch me dead out there, probably because one of the big green bastards had eaten my corpse."

Brian was only slightly tempted to ask him what a "mutie" was. He wisely decided against it.

"So...it's sort of dangerous? The D.C. ruins?"

"...dangerous? Lad, D.C.'s sort of dangerous like the bombs were sort of radioactive. Raiders, Muties, Ghouls, the worse shite that nobody knows about because nobody even lives to fuckin' tell about it..."

Brian tried not to pale. He tried not to scream, or cry, or throw up all over Moriarty's squeaky clean bar. He even succeeded for the most part. He tasted vomit, but kept it down, and didn't scream so much as produce a sort of strangled sob.

Too much. It was all too damn much. The last few hours had left him emotionally drained, and now this?

_Seriously, dad?_

But Brian didn't let himself cry. Crying was weakness. It was surrender.

And Brian wasn't finished. Not now. Not at the whispered warning of some old man.

"Could you mark the Studio on my map?" Brian offered his left arm, the Pip-boy glowing it's dull, toxic green His voice was empty and tired, and Moriarty stared at him.

"Sure, lad. Ye've got a death wish, who am I to stop ye?" He pulled up the map on the Pip, selected a place somewhere in the highlighted sprawl that Brian assumed was D.C.

Brian sighed, and got up to leave.

Moriarty looked up at him sharply. "Oi, where the fuck do ye think yer goin'?"

Brian turned his head. "We're done. You have the caps, I have my destination. Am I missing something?"

"Yer damn right, yer missin' somethin'. I offered ye a drink, boy." He raised the beer Brian had left.

Brian stared back at him.

"I told you, I don't drink."

"And I'm tellin' ye...it's not a good idea to turn down what I give ye. Now sit down, lad, and be grateful I don't charge ye for the thing."

Brian rolled his eyes, but grabbed the beer, and snapped the drink open on the countertop, pocketing the cap for good measure. Waste not, want not. He met Moriarty's eyes, and the two clinked their bottles together. Brian thought, _What the hell. If I was ever gonna start drinking, now's the time, right?_

He sipped the beer, kept his face blank...and spewed the vile liquid all over himself.

"Can't handle yer drink, boy?" Moriarty snorted.

"It's not that...there's dirt or something in this." Brian inspected the rim; it was fairly coated in dust, which must have fallen into the beer when the cap was dislodged. "Yeah. Dust. Well, I'm not drinking any more of this crap. I'm leaving. Won't let the door hit my ass on the way out. Hope you choke on those caps." He turned, and Moriarty seized his arm.

"Oh, what the hell is it now? I'm tired, I…" He stopped when he saw the barkeep's face. There was something raw, something disturbing in his expression. His voice could have lulled a an infant to sleep.

"Dust? In my beer? In my Saloon?" Before Brian could open his mouth, Moriarty pried the beer from the fingers of his hand. He stared at the offending bottle for a few seconds, and then his shoulders hunched.

"Gob! Get yer skinless ass over here!" Moriarty suddenly roared.

Gob hadn't moved since Brian's blunder of a threat. Brian had forgotten the Ghoul was even there, listening.

Now he leapt half a foot into the air, and he gave that same, pitifully high squeak despite his ruined lungs.

"Right away, sir!" He scurried behind the bar to stand next to his employer. An ittermittent tremor ran through his body.

"What the fuck d'ye call this shite, Gob?" Moriarty held the bottle up to the yellowish light, practically shoving it into Gob's face.

"Sir, I…" Gob seemed unsure of what to say. Had he skin, he might have been sweating.

"Dust, Gob. Fucking. Dust. In my Saloon." Moriarty jabbed a finger into the ghoul's nose, and it might have been a knife for Gob's cowering. "What've ye been doin', when I told ye to pull your head out of yer ass and clean the bottles, huh?"

"Nothin', sir, I-"

"I try to hold a meeting, and ye go fuck it up like ye always do! Slimeball piece of shite, ye planned this, didn't ye?"

Gob seemed close to tears, but he didn't defend himself. Brian stared at the spectacle, curious.

Moriarty's face was the color of a rotten tomato.

"Of course ye planned it. Can't let real humans make a livin', can ye? And after everythin' I did for ye…"

Gob stared down into his employer's eyes, transfixed. Moriarty took a deep, snarling breath through his nose. His voice was silken again.

"Taste this shite, Gob." He offered the beer. Gob blinked, and some of the tension drained from his shoulders. He took the bottle in slender, skinless fingers the color of sausage, and lifted the beer to where his lips used to be. His face crinkled at the taste of dust. Moriarty smiled, satisfied.

Then he ripped the bottle away, and smashed it into Gob's temple.

Glass and drops of blood bounced everywhere, and Gob went down. Moriarty drove his fist into the ghoul's ribs on his way to the floor, and Brian heard something crack. A rib, probably. Gob must have been half a foot taller than Moriarty, but he said nothing, just gave a zombie's moan. He didn't get up. He waited. Patiently, almost.

Moriarty was just getting started.

He lifted one boot and brought it down like he was trying to stomp a soda can flat. Brian had an excellent view. He saw Gob's cheekbone crumple. The barkeep grabbed another bottle, whiskey this time, and emptied half the contents over the bleeding ghoul before dropping the bottle on his head. Another kick to the ribs. Another crack. Then a fist to the jaw, a torn tooth floating in the blood. Moriarty stomped his way up Gob's body, then down again, his brown boots dyed a black red in a few seconds.

Jericho ignored the ruckus, drinking devotedly, thoughtfully in his corner. Nova smoked, her eyes burrowing everywhere but behind the bar, her hands shaking every few seconds. _Just the cold, _she told herself.

Brian kept watching, as his stomach twisted and his mind burned. He bit his tongue, to keep from...screaming? Laughing? Would he even know the difference?

And Moriarty wasn't finished yet. He had snatched up the wrench lying on the shelf, and was finding various creative ways to employ it.

Gob's blood, oddly enough, was the least peculiar thing about him. It was reddish black in the yellow light, and it looked...normal. Human. Fascinated, Brian watched it spread in a sweet, sticky puddle, mixing with booze and glass.

How could one skinless man bleed so much?

Brian wasn't sure how long it lasted. But Moriarty knew when he was finished.

"Get up." The words were a wolf's growl, incomprehensible yet utterly clear.

Brian stared at Gob. His chest didn't look like it was rising and falling, and there was so, so much blood.

Was Gob...had Moriarty just…

"Get up, I said." The words were raw with fury, but tired. Moriarty was an old man, after all. He kicked Gob in the ribs. No crack this time, nothing left to break; just a soft, meaty thump. "UP, I SAID!"

There was a shuddering, rattling breath. And Gob got up. Not dead after all.

The few patches of skin had turned purple, and shards of broken glass had buried themselves in the mounds of raw flesh. Colorless eyes were cloudy.

"Yer forgettin' somethin', Gob," Moriarty huffed, winded.

The ghoul nodded, and opened his mouth to speak. Blood and glass tumbled out.

"Thang ye, mistuh Mowiawtey, fuh teachin' me my mannuhs." The words were resigned.

"Attaghoul. Ye can pay me back in the rent, don't worry. Now, get the fuck out of my sight. Ye'd better clean all this shite-" he gestured to the bloody cocktail he stood in, "-up before mornin'." Gob nodded, and limped-somehow, only one of his kneecaps had been busted open- up the stairs, silent.

Nova kept smoking. Jericho finished one bottle, snapped open another one. Brian stared where Gob had disappeared.

"Bloody hell, are ye still here, lad?!" For Moriarty had just fixed his gaze on Brian. Brian didn't answer. He turned, left, and sprinted the rest of the way to his house.

* * *

><p>His new house whispered to him in the dark.<p>

Brian didn't believe in ghosts. The thought that anything could return from the afterlife was ridiculous (hell, the very concept of an afterlife was ridiculous) but nonetheless, he found himself-there was no other word for it-spooked.

The "whispers," the groans and creaks and pleas he heard weren't the dead, but the wind attacking loose bolts and shoddily welded steel, slapped together like those patched-up dolls girls always got for their birthdays in the Vault.

_The Vault…_

He wondered what Amata was doing now, what Gomez was being ordered into; he wondered who had taken care of Jonas's body. How had Amata described the killing?

_(they just beat him, and beat him, and wouldn't stop…)_

_No, don't think about that, mustn't…_

Too late. The sound of Gob's ribs cracking echoed through the house, the glass shattered somewhere in the kitchen.

A gust of wind rocked the house, and every bolt howled, every hole in the steel wailed, every hinge complained.

Brian pulled the moth-eaten blanket-about as comfortable as steel wool soaked in lemon juice- tighter around himself.

He did not consider himself a naive person; Brian had read of the Old World's death, of the folly that had carried it to it's funeral pyre.

But it was one thing to read of the world burning, and another to see the ashes raining from the sky.

What Moriarty had done to Gob...the whole incident was too surreal, and he couldn't remember the thing as a whole, just as a grotesque cloudy blob of crack and blood mixing with beer and broken glass.

_Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium…_

But his heart wasn't in it. Today had raised more questions than answers, and more problems than solutions.

Miles. Miles and miles lay between him and his father's last known destination-seriously, a goddamn radio station?-and he was just about broke. If GNR was more than a day's walk away, which it almost certainly would be, Brian would need the supplies to last him at least two days travel. That meant food, water, ammunition, and...armor? A new gun? Brian wasn't sure what he'd even need, much less how to get the caps to buy it.

_Whatever it takes._

Sleep wouldn't come, and Brian found himself thinking of Silver. So many needle marks-and so few caps. What would she do? Keep living in that crappy little house until she starved? He wondered how she would get food; sneak into town, try to steal scraps from the Brass Lantern?

_Wait a minute…_

How had Moriarty even known where to find Silver? He would never leave Megaton, his comfortable nest of blackmail and booze; But he had said something…

Brian had a good memory. Photographic, almost.

_(she's holed up right outside of town, in the Springvale ruins, if my source's tellin' it straight.)_

Source? What source? Who was his informant, Jericho? That other "employee"(he avoided calling her _whore_ in his mental tirade) Nova? Or some other anonymous, unknown minion?

And what if…

What if this...employee...checked on Silver? What if Moriarty's informant happened to poke their nose in her shithole drug den? What if they found one very, very alive junkie?

And what would Moriarty do then, exactly? Brian remembered Jericho's empty eyes, dark and soulless as the barrel of that damn rifle of his.

_No. No, can't think like that. Moriarty's no reason to check, no reason if he's got his caps. He wanted the money more than her life, right? He's just a businessman, in his sick way. Right?_

Sure. Just a businessman. Which is why he beat Gob within an inch of his life for...Brian couldn't even remember why.

_If Moriarty finds her, alive…_

...No. Too many "if's", too many variables to accurately predict an outcome. It was conjecture, all meaningless, arbitrary conjecture…

_Well, sure. But all the variables are practically givens. You know what he'll do to you when...if he learns you lied to him. He'll have Jericho kill Silver, and then he'll have you "visited" too. At the very least, he'll get you kicked out of town, he has the support-and you won't last a day out there. You'll starve, and the ants will eat what's left._

Brian was starting to sweat, but he was freezing; he burrowed even tighter in the sandpaper blanket, clutching it around him to shelter him from the big, bad world.

_So here's the question, Brian, the question you're scared shitless of answering, _whispered that persistent, rational voice from somewhere in his left hemisphere. _Can Moriarty find out Silver's alive?_

Brian recited the periodic table eleven times counting, counted his breaths, thought of happy times and happy things.

But sleep did not come, his mind was on fire, and the question lingered.

Five minutes or five hours later, it became too much to bear. He threw the crappy blanket off, and dressed in the solid darkness of his room. He grabbed what he needed, half-formed plans bouncing around in his skull, and staggered down the stairs, towards the door.

He knew what he needed to do.

* * *

><p>Silver wasn't sure whether she was asleep or awake; she thought she had to be awake from the way her head kept pounding, like a radscorpion and deathclaw either tearing each other new ones or having a fuckfest. Plus, she had to piss like she couldn't believe, her stomach was absolutely killing her.<p>

Then again, she could be having a nightmare. Silver didn't get those often, but when they came to visit, she wouldn't sleep for days afterward.  
><em>Ugh-why does everything taste like shit?<em>

She didn't know. Maybe it was the half-bottle of vodka she had chugged...no, wait, not vodka. Tequila? Whiskey? Fuckin' paint thinner? Whatever it was, it had been the last of her booze. She had started with so much-she had raided the bastard's bar before coming here-but one blink and it was ten bottles gone, another and the rest had vanished too.

Was she hungover, or just sober? She couldn't tell the difference anymore.

_What the fuck am I gonna do? _No caps, no booze, and starting to run low on chems, too. The Psycho was gone, so now she had to rely on Jet and Med-X to get the job done.

Oh, and she only had enough food to last her another day or so. But that wasn't quite so high in her list of priorities.

At least she wasn't dead now. That kid, the short, sorta awkward kid with the creepy fuckin' ice eyes and the gun...wait, shit, had she imagined him? She didn't think she had, but she could barely remember what he had said, and she had been celebrating the last of her Psycho when he had barged in.

The kid, if he was real, hadn't killed her. Silver couldn't remember what they had talked about, but she felt some odd sense of gratitude towards him; He could have done anything he wanted, and she didn't think he had made her do anything...anything like _that_. She would have remembered something like that, right?

She couldn't answer the question.

Maybe she should quit… had the kid said something like that? She wasn't sure.

But if starving was death, withdrawal was hell. You could ask Leo Stahl how quitting worked for him.

Just needed to survive 'till tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. That was all she could do.

There was a sharp knock at the door.

Silver stared. Was that real, or-

Another round of knocking, frantically shaking the door in it's frame.

_Who the fuck…_

She snuck to the door…

...only to have the rotten floorboards croak when she stepped on them. She bit her tongue to keep from swearing out loud; the fucking things always did that.

Silver stared out the peephole, the way she always did when she thought somebody was at her door. Like earlier today.

But this wasn't right. It was night, dark as a Yao Guai's asshole outside, but she should be able to see something. The shapes of the wreckage littering the garden, at least. But there was nothing to be seen.

Just blackness.

_What the fuck is goin'-_

Silver would never finish that thought.

She would never hear the bark of the gun that killed her, would never hear the tinkle of broken peephole glass falling to the rotten floorboards.

Bullets travel far too fast for that.

Silver's corpse lay on the floor in filthy undergarments, a confused expression on it's face. A face that might've been pretty, if the bullet hadn't popped through her eye like a bubble.

Outside the shitty little house, Brian Moore stood frozen for a moment, the barrel of his gun glued to what used to be the peephole. He had heard the soft thud a few seconds ago. He knew what it meant. Should he open the door, to be sure? His breaths came shallow, rapid. He was hyperventilating. The pistol, heavy in his hands, trembled.

He didn't know how long he stood there, breathing, just breathing and listening to the night.

Breathing. Just to make sure he still could.

Something warm soaked his foot, and he cried out. He stared at the liquid, tinted black in the night, rolling out from under the door as smoothly as maple syrup over pancakes. He sniffed, an involuntary reaction: it had been so long since the Vault had served pancakes.

It didn't smell like syrup. It smelled like iron and meat, like his father's work.

Tears mixed with sweat burned his eyes and made him blink. He stammered out something, an apology, a pardon; and he shoved his pistol into his pocket. He turned to the lights of Megaton, stark against the coal-colored night, and he lumbered towards them. His tears froze to his cheeks, his breath frosted in the cold, but his mind was on fire, ignited by an ember of a thought.

_Whatever it takes, dad. I promised._

_Whatever it takes._


	4. Cowboys

_**A/N: As with the last chapter, or the last three chapters, depending how you look at it, there are some typos and SPaG in this one. I promise that the nex one, and probably the ones after it, have been edited and checked to within an inch of their lives, **_

* * *

><p>Cowboys<p>

* * *

><p><em>He knocks on the door once, his knuckles rapping a soulless metallic noise against the cool steel. All the Vault doors sound like that, he knows. So why does it sound more hollow, emptier, hungrier now?<em>

_The intercom buzzes, and yanks him from his sullen fugue. _

"_Enter."_

_The door twists itself open mechanically, gears spinning, and Brian steps into the office._

_It's small, and cramped, as befits it's owner's position. The fluorescents lighting the room start to stutter, then stabilize, tinting the room a bluish green. It makes Brian feel slightly ill._

_Brotch sits behind his tiny desk, the pair of reading glasses he wears to look smarter sitting his forehead, while he pretends to focus on whatever he's scribbling in his notebook. _

_Brian's observed the man enough in class to realize the notes aren't real; just scribbles to intimidate his students. Brotch likes to look busy, he's noted. _

_A man of pretense, is Edwin Brotch._

_Brotch tries to look indifferent, so he doesn't address Brian after the clock in the corner ticks sixty times. Or ninety. Or one-hundred-twenty. _

_Two minutes of meaningless scribbling. Brian hopes that hand is starting to hurt. _

_He can wait. He wants to see Brotch break._

_The teacher doesn't disappoint. After another ninety seconds, he tosses down his pen and grimaces in that enthusiastic way of his. _

"_What is it, Mr. Moore? As you can see, I'm quite busy—" _

"_What the hell is this?" Brian snaps. The silence _has _gotten to him after all, infuriating in its impertinence. He holds up the crumpled sheet of paper that slipped under his door that morning, and shoves it under Brotch's nose._

_Brotch, taken aback, reads the contract on pure reflex, his lips moving slightly. He peers back at Brian._

"_Well? Congratulations on your new position. I'm not quite sure what you want from me, but—"_

_Brian glares at him, and it's enough to make the fake bastard cough and look away. Brian doesn't make eye contact often. He saves it for when he needs it. _

"'_Brian Moore,'" Brian read, his voice cracking with fury. "'we, the administrative board of Vault 101, are pleased to inform you of your new duties. We have examined your G.O.A.T., and after much consideration—"_

"_I helped write the contract, boy, you don't need—" Brotch began weakly._

"—_after much consideration, to designate you—" Brian swallowed his anger to make the words comprehensible, "—_Pip-boy Programmer." _It was starting to crumple in his fist. Brian tossed the contract at the teacher, who fumbled it before glancing over the rest of the document. _

_He _hmm'_d to himself. "Yeah. You start Monday. So what?" _

_Brian stared, actually surprised for the first time in the conversation. Brotch didn't notice. "What exactly is the problem here? I mean, you get B-level quarters, says so right here, and hey, a nice allowance of credits for the Vault store. I'm living in the C's, for heaven's sake." He tries to pass off a sob as a chuckle. _

_Brian kept staring. _

"_So what?" he said slowly. "So what? So...what?" He starts to laugh, and it's high pitched, like a schoolgirl's titter. Brian doesn't laugh often, but he recognizes the first notes of hysteria. He throws his arms in the air, and keeps tittering. Brotch looks uneasy. _

"_So...so what? So _what?_!" _

"_Mr. Moore, please, I'm afraid I-"_

"_Are you blind? Deaf? Mentally disabled, maybe? No, don't answer, I'm not sure I want to know." Brian leans forward, and Brotch's gaze locks to his like opposite poles of a magnet. _

"_What the hell happened, Brotch?"_

"_I...We…"_

"_A doctor. You said I was good to go, a doctor, you _said _so!"_

_Brotch tries to straighten, to win back his semblance of authority. _

"_Brian..." Oh, very subtle, as though using his first name might sympathize Brian to this simpering puppet. "...we, I mean the Overseer and I, we don't just put you where you wanna go because you _want _to, we look at, you know, your test scores, the G.O.A.T.—"_

_Brian's stare glues Brotch's tongue to the roof of his mouth like it's steel on a cold day. Brian crosses his arms._

"_Test scores? The G.O.A.T.? Are you seriously trying to tell me I didn't score high enough? Name one. Name one failure, hell, one wrong _question_. The scores are perfect. We both know so."_

"_Brian, we already have a doctor. Your father, and Jonas with him, are fully capable of…" Brotch starts feebly._

"_So you make me a tech monkey instead? Where's the goddamn logic in that?"_

"_Your scores on the G.O.A.T. indicate a very rare affinity with Old World technology, and precious few students-"_

"_But anybody can learn to program Pips on the job! How are you going to find a new doctor when dad retires?" Brian plows onwards before Brotch has a chance to respond. _

"_My father's overworked as is, and you know it. One doctor for more than a hundred patients? And Jonas is just his assistant, I can pick up the slack, I can—"_

"Brian!" _Brotch's glasses slip down his brow and onto the narrow slope of his too-short nose. "All of this is immaterial. You _cannot _contest the results of the G.O.A.T. The Overseer's word is final, and his signature is right here on the contract. Now, I'll do us both a favor and forget this conversation ever happened, but if you keep pushing I'll have to—"_

"_It's Almodovar, isn't it?" Brian knows it already, but the slight twitch of Brotch's left eye tells him that he's right. _

"_Brian, don't be ridiculous. The Overseer and I only choose how we think you'll best be able to serve the Vault, and you…"_

"_And I can best serve the Vault as a doctor. I know that. You know that. _He _knows that. He's always hated me, _look _at me, Brotch!"_

_Brotch avoids his gaze adamantly. His voice is resigned, and just a little bit apologetic. "Kid, feel lucky that you got away with tech monkey, okay? You're right. The Overseer doesn't... he doesn't like you. Your grades are the only reason you aren't burning garbage in the Maintenance wing. Are you happy now?" The confession has taken something out of him. Brotch seems...tired._

_Brian's hands are starting to shake. When he tries to clasp them together, he notices that he's sweating, a cold, clammy flood. "That's not...you know that's not fair."_

"_Oh, I know, kid. That's why I'm going to shut up about it and do what my boss wants me to. It's why you're going to be a good tech monkey and get your ass to work on Monday. Because we both know Almodovar's favorite saying, don't we?" Brian doesn't answer. Brotch leans forward and spits the answer out, like something rancid forced down his throat too many times. "'We're born in the Vault. And we die in the Vault.' And what happens during the life in between, Moore? That's up to him. I'm living in the C's. I don't want to get moved to the D's. So shut up and cut your losses like the smart little boy everybody thinks you are." _

_Brian stares. Brotch isn't scared of those eyes anymore. The ice inside's been broken, and it's starting to melt._

"_I...I can't…"Brian's anger is gone. Now dread's starting to claw spiderlike up his spine. He's lost. He's lost, and he knows it. He has to beg. "Please. Just...fix it. Talk to him. I'll do anything."_

_Silence. Brotch fixes his glasses. He starts to scribble determinately, pointedly, in his notebook._

_He's a very busy man, after all._

"Please!"

_Sixty ticks of the clock. Ninety. One-hundred-twenty. The silence is too much, and Brian's lost the game. Every part of him, every molecule is shaking, but somehow his chest feels like it's reached absolute zero. The dread's reached his heart, it's growing in his chest like a tumor, gnawing at his entire being. _

"_I'm _supposed _to be a doctor. I've always known so. Ever since I was a kid. Please."_

_Brotch keeps scribbling._

_Brian leaves some amount of time later. He's still shaking, so it takes a while for him to find his room. He ignores his dad calling after him in the next room over. The dread hasn't gone away yet. The tumor keeps growing, spreading over his soul. _

_Brian sits on his bed for a few minutes, shivering. He locks the door, makes sure his father's not paying attention. He turns out the lights, an extra precaution._

_Only then does he allow himself to cry. _

_The dread doesn't leave. _

_It stays with him for the next three years. _

_Brian cries, and his head pounds and tears burn his eyes…_

...And he felt sick. Beneath the moth-eaten blanket, a small river of perspiration congealed on his skin. It didn't matter that it was so goddamn cold in the steel house. He tasted vomit in his throat. He turned on his side so he wouldn't choke on the putrid stuff.

That was when he felt the dampness of his cheeks, moist eyes blinking into a soggy pillow. His nose was running thick, too.

Brian shivered at the thought; he hated crying, always had. Tears burned his eyes and made his nose run, which in turn made him look like some disheveled, snotty idiot. History had never respected fools who sobbed into their mother's sleeves. You might as well scream surrender to the entire world.

And Brian loathed surrender.

It really was too cold in the house; he wondered why the settlers had felt some incessant need to make everything out of steel.

Brian wiped his nose with the blanket—it was his house, he could do what he damn well pleased—and shrugged the disgusting thing away. He dressed quickly, bruises and scrapes popping in the cold, until his eyes landed on his sneakers.

One of them was stained dark red from the sole down. Brian stared for a second.

He started to chuckle, wheezing. Then he spewed yesterday's lunch all over the floor, and right on his bloody shoe.

After hacking up the last throat-burning vestiges, Brian staggered downstairs. Wadsworth wished him a good morning and floated up the stairs, eager to vacuum the puddle of sick.

Brian went to the kitchenette in back. There was nothing in the fridge, even after he checked the third time in a row. He would have to get breakfast at that "restaurant" in the city, the Lantern. Two-hundred year old chemicals with a dash of artificial nutrients. Yippee.

There was a broken pane of glass hanging over the sink, and it took a few seconds for Brian to realize the creepy guy staring at him was his own reflection. He stared; he had never been handsome. Not even close. But at least he could always say he was _clean_. Now his normally pale face looked like he had gone apple-bobbing in bleach, his long nose hogging all the blood, and colorless eyes turned red by those damnable tears. He had never wanted to grow a beard, and normally his body obliged, giving him only the faintest fuzz to shave away, but now an ugly, disheveled caterpillar was dying on his upper lip. His hair, normally combed straight as a ruler, looked like something small and furry had lived in it for a few days.

And he was starting to _stink_. He hadn't had a bath since he'd left the Vault, two days ag—

Wait. Two days? Two days, and he looked like this? Two days and he'd fallen this far?

Two days, and he'd become a murderer?

Tears threatened. He didn't let them come. He had no right, no _reason_ to cry.

He'd had to. There had been no other way. It had been him, or her. Dad, or her. When you put that in an equation, it wouldn't balance.

It was as simple as that.

He had done what he had needed to do. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Brian became aware, after a few minutes of staring at the broken mirror, that certain urges were calling. He had already searched the house for a bathroom, and had found none.

Sighing, he hunched his shoulders, unzipped the small flap on his jumpsuit, and went in the sink.

After all, it had been two days since he'd seen a urinal.

* * *

><p>After wiping down his disgusting shoe, and wrapping tape around the sole to hide the bloodstain, Brian headed into town. Jenny, the pretty girl who had smiled her pretty girl smile at him yesterday, led him—unsmiling, now—to a small table in the corner of the cramped room inside the Lantern. She promised to be right with him.<p>

Naturally, she took about twenty minutes to remember he existed. And the room was just about empty, too. Service, apparently, had died in the nuclear holocaust.

"So, what'll ya have?" Jenny asked when he finally waved her over. She _was_ smiling now: her polite, customer smile, not the frivolously suggestive one from yesterday. Good. Brian had enough on his mind without enduring her ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, a small box of snack cakes("Fancy Lads, a big delight in each bite!") that tasted like artificial, synthetic dog feces, and choked them down. He wondered whether they were any better two hundred years ago. He didn't hear Simms until the big man plopped into the seat across from him, dressed as usual in his cowboy getup.

"Hey there, Brian!" The sheriff's rumbly voice was too warm for the chilly room. "Saw you come in here, thought I'd say thanks again." His smile looked almost as pleasant and organic as the snack cakes dissolving in Brian's stomach.

"Really?" Brian asked, wary.

The smile collapsed under its own weight.

"Well...sorta. I really do wanna thank you, it's great what you did—"

"So what'd you really come for, then?"

Simms's cheerful demeanor stuffed itself away somewhere in the Sheriff's duster. He regarded Brian calmly, and...was that caution in his eyes? There was a sinking feeling in Brian's gut that had nothing to do with the Fancy Lads.

"Kid...I've gotta ask you somethin'. And I'm gonna need you to answer honestly."

_Holy crap, he knows. He knows what I did to Silver. He's going to throw me out, crapcrapcrap—_

"Yeah? What is it?" Brian heard himself ask. _My gun. I left my gun at the house. Why the hell didn't I bring my gun?_

Then: _I deserve this. This is karma. It has to be. _

"Did you really use those Mentats to disarm the bomb?"

Brian blinked. "What?"

"I said—"

"I heard you." Brian's heart was jerking itself in a thousand different directions.

"So? Did you, or didn't—"

"No, I didn't use them." Brian wasn't trying to say anything; it just slipped out.

Simms blinked, put off by the kid's unflinching honesty. "Well, why the fuck not? You got a death wish or something?"

"Well, I didn't need them, did I? I handled the situation just fine." Despite the circumstances, Brian noticed that surge of pride in his chest that he had felt yesterday.

"But how the hell were you supposed to know that before you went in? I mean, hell's bells, kid... you could've killed us all!" Simms was shaking his head in disbelief.

"Wait, how did you even know that I didn't take them?" The emotional shift, from terror to elation to curiosity was making Brian's chest hurt.

"Hell, boy, I've seen folks on Mentats before. Some of these idiots, they think that if they pop enough of those tabs, they'll end up making themselves into geniuses or something, but most of the time they just end up addicted to the stuff." Simms sighed, and for a second he entertained some unpleasant memory. "The way the high works, they think faster than anybody else in the room, but they're also always twitchin' and staring at stuff like they see something nobody else can. You were dead calm, after disarming that thing. Normal. That's what tipped me off, first. Got to thinking 'bout it some more, and realized you were lying. So I ask you again: What the fuck were you thinking?"

Brian opened his mouth, and found there was nothing inside. He shrugged.

Simms didn't look satisfied.

"And what the hell was that supposed to mean?"

"That I don't know. It just sort of...felt like I had to do it _my _way, you know?" Brian met the Sheriff's gaze, hoping to find understanding in those golden eyes, and saw only confusion blinking back at him.

"No, I don't know what you mean. I mean, you seem like a smart kid, Brian—"

A throat clenched around Brian's throat. _A smart kid? _

"—but you can't go taking risks like that, not if you wanna survive out here. This isn't your Vault, and if you make a mistake—"

_A smart KID?!_

"Simms." The word coiled and frosted off his tongue, like breath on a winter day.

Simms stopped talking. There was something different in the boy's stance now. Something...unsettling.

"Drop it. Now." Ice eyes stared into gold. Simms cocked his head.

"Brian, I—"

"Drop it. You owe me. You hired me to do a job, a job you didn't think I could do, and then I did it. Perfectly. How I did it is immaterial. You owe me—a whole hell of a lot more than that shithole house, by the way—and if you want me to forget that, you'll stop. Bitching. About Mentats." _I said bitching. I _NEVER _say bitching. Or shithole. _left hemisphere said to righty.

_Shut up, bitch, _replied righty to lefty.

The Sheriff stared. Brian licked crumbs off his fingers. Meanwhile, his heart tried to do a cartwheel into his throat. _Holy crap, what the hell is WRONG with me?_

Brian waited. Silence stretched, and then it thickened, boring into his skull.

_Hydrogen, lithium, sodium—_

Simms let out a puff of breath, and the words that followed in it's wake were grudgingly honest.

"You're right, boy."

"Wait, really?" Brian blinked. "I mean, of course I'm right. I know I'm right, but that's...agreeable of you."

"No, no. I do owe you, and I suppose I am just beating a dead brahmin." Simms chuckled after another second.

"I was… out of line. You don't need to—"

"It's nothing, boy. When you're as old as I am, your pride starts to become less important than just letting the stupid shit flush itself away." The two sat in silence for another few minutes, but a lighter silence now, a comfortable one.

There was a noise from outside, and Brian glimpsed Jericho in the window, yelling something about how "that religious fucking schizo" needed to shut up about the Glory of Atom. Simms made an angry noise in the back of his throat.

"Never should have let 'im in," the Sheriff muttered. "No raider ever brought this town anything but trouble."

"Raider?" Brian asked, his eyebrows arching.

"Raiders, fiends, gangs, junkies, bandits, whatever the fuck you want to call 'em won't stop 'em from putting a bullet between your eyes, if you've got something they if you're stupid enough to walk into their territory." Simms produced a flask and eyed it thirstily. "Raiders are the folks that'll kill your children if they can't sell 'em for money, and burn you alive if they want to keep warm. You get my meaning?"

_So that's who was pointing a gun at me yesterday. _"And..you just let one of them in? Why?"

Simms snorted. "Oh, if you ask Jericho he'll tell you he's reformed, that he's put the worst of it behind him. And the hell of it is, it's the truth. He doesn't shoot at people who look at him funny. He doesn't rape women just because he sees something he likes. All he does is Moriarty's dirty work, beat up the occasional drunkie, and if he didn't, that old bastard would find somebody else to do it for him." He stared at the flask for another longing moment, then sighed and slipped it away. "Besides, the bastard's too good a shot with that rifle of his. We need him if any of his old _buddies_—" Simms spat the word out, as though it tasted too sour for his liking, "—decide to try their luck with the town." He pulled his hat down over his eyes.

Brian found himself staring at the hat. _Cowboy hats. How, in a world where towns of scrap metal and skinless ghouls are the norm, where giant flesh-eating ants and worse wander the wastes, do people still wear goddamn cowboy hats? _Brian had always liked cowboys. The Western Expansion had been his favorite historical period to study in class, so much so that he had spent an inordinate amount of time reading about it outside of Brotch's narrow-minded, poorly phrased lectures. Something about it appealed to him.

So many people, making civilization better without even realizing it. The quest, the need for gold.

He missed reading about it.

"Something funny, boy?" Simms had caught him smiling. Brian snapped out of his daydream.

"Oh...nothing. It's just...I like your hat." Brian continued hurriedly when Simms raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Really. I always wanted one, when I was younger. Well, I always wanted to be a cowboy, but somehow that wasn't on the G.O.A.T."

Simms looked confused. The Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test had an unfortunate acronym, Brian realized.

"Anyway," Brian quickly said, before awkward questions arose, "There were never any cowboy hats inside the Vault to play with. So, I ended up trying to be a doctor instead, like dad…" he trailed off. His dream that morning had left a sour taste in his mouth, and a bitter tingling beneath his eyes.

But Brian would not let himself cry. One humiliation had been enough.

"...just nostalgia, I guess." he finally finished. Simms stared at him and through him, lost in his thoughts.

"Cowboys, huh?" The Sheriff finally said. A second passed. His shoulders started to shake. A rumble spread through the ground, and Brian thought of the holotapes of earthquakes Brotch had shown them once.

Then he realized the big man was laughing.

"Holy Hell, I knew I liked the look of you, kid! Cowboys! Ha!" He caught sight of Brian's expression, and waved an appeasing hand. "I'm not laughing at you kid, ha, I'm laughing...heh, heh...I'm laughing at myself." Brian was reminded absurdly of Moriarty's hysterical breakdown last night. He put that out of mind quickly.

"So, what's so funny?" He asked testily.

"Can't you see, boy? Look at me…" Simms waved a huge hand over himself, from the hat to the beaten leather boots. "I've been playing cowboys my whole life. Drives most folks around here up the wall, they can't stand the hat...and you, you walk in and say...ha ha!" Simms was almost crying now.

Brian found himself chuckling, too.

_I killed a woman last night, _he thought.

It felt good to laugh about cowboys with the man who should be killing him.

They sat in silence again when the laughter died. Time, short or long, passed as time will.

Brian stared at the clock in his Pip-Boy. Close to eleven, nearly an hour since he woke up. He should get moving.

"What's your plan, kid?"

"Hmm?"

"Your plan. Your goal. Your 'deal', as my little punk son might say. I mean, you walk in here, ask if I've seen your dad, take care of the biggest pain in my ass since Moriarty opened up shop, and move in? What's next for you? And more importantly, can I help?" The earnestness in Simms's eyes was a little unnerving. Brian shrugged.

"First things first, I think I've gotta get a job. I'm just about broke, and I don't know how I'm gonna get the supplies I'll need to get to my dad."

"Oh, you found out where he went?"

_Dammit! _That was dangerous territory; couldn't let anything about Moriarty's deal slip to Simms.

"Yeah," Brian said, and continued quickly before Simms could ask anything else, "Galaxy News. God knows why. But it's right smack in the middle of D.C.—" Simms winced.

"Yeah, that's not a place you wanna go without a gun. A big one. And some armor, too."

"All of which costs caps. I'm thinking I'll ask around town, try to find something I'm good at that somebody's willing to pay me for." Brian started to rise.

"Wait a second…" Simms rose with him, and started to turn out the pockets of his duster. It didn't take more than a second for Brian to realize the older man's intentions. He shook his head.

"No. Absolutely not. I'm not taking your—"

"Brian, you damn well better. It's like you said, I owe you, and I'm not letting you walk out into the Wastes without proper gear—"

"Jesus, I was trying to make a point. You gave me the house, that's enough. Really, I don't want—"

"Well, too bad. This isn't up to you, kid—" Simms had located the bag, jingling with what could only be caps.

"I said NO!" Brian bit his tongue, but it was too late. The other few diners looked up sharply, then pretended not to be watching.

Lovely. Now they thought he was antagonizing their Sheriff.

_Are they wrong? _Lefty asks.

"Boy…" Simms stared at him, something like pity in his eyes.

_(...a smart kid…)_

"No. I'm doing this my way. Sorry, but...it has to be my way." Brian didn't realize he had said that aloud until he heard the words echoing off the walls. He flushed.

Simms's gaze hardened, molten gold cooling.  
>"Your way, huh? Like the bomb?"<p>

"Yeah. And see how well that turned out." Brian turned and walked towards the door, ignoring the stares. He had always ignored the stares in the Vault, too, and the skill carried over here.

Simms caught up to him outside.  
>"Okay, okay! Don't take my caps, then!" Simms jogged in front of him, his hands thrust out placatingly. "But at least take my advice, kid; Go to Moira."<p>

Brian drew to a stop.

"What the hell is a Moira?"

"Wouldn't I like to know," Simms muttered under his breath. Then he turned his attention to Brian. "Moira Brown. She runs the shop up there, Craterside Supply. Last few weeks, she's been bugging me every time I walked in, to do some kind of freelance job for her. Researching, she says."

"Research?" Brian's interest piqued despite himself. It sounded like one of Brotch's Old World history projects.

The kind Brian had always aced.

"Yeah. Moira, she's a little...well. You'll see. But she oughta be able to pay you pretty well. That shop of hers gets a lot of business."

Brian exhaled slowly. It wasn't charity. Just advice. He could take advice.

"I...I'll check that out. Thanks."

"Take care, son." Simms trudged away, the cowboy hat keeping the sun out of his eyes.

* * *

><p>The hinges of the store's door, like the hinges of every door in Megaton, squealed a rusty symphony when he forced it open. And that was where the sense of familiarity and recognition vanished.<p>

Brian's first thought was: _Holy crap, the place is on fire! Somebody help!_

His second thought was:_ Eww, that smoke smells terrible._

It really _was _terrible; what was that? Hydrogen sulfide? Brahmin manure? Something equally horrendous?

Brian tried to speak, but the air was pregnant with the odor, and he inhaled enough to make his eyes water.

"Hello, is *_cough_*anybody here? Moira Brow—" Another round of hacking coughs derailed the sentence into meaningless babble.

Then, the _chack _of a magazine sliding into a rifle. Brian thought of Jericho, and his bowels turned to water; but the man who stumbled from the pungent cloud wasn't bald, or even that much taller than him. Brian would have been thrilled that Moriarty's personal monster hadn't come to punish him, except he was acutely aware that he was staring down the barrel of an automatic weapon.

"Whoa, whoa! Don't shoot!" Flashing back to all those stupid cop shows Butch and his sycophants liked to watch, he shoved his hands in the air, and dropped to his knees. "I'm friendly! Holy hell, I'm friendly!

His assailant drew to a halt, and blinked rapidly. He stared at Brian for a second, then tilted his head to one side.

"...What the fuck are you doing?" He asked, befuddled.

Brian's mouth went dry.

"Um...surrendering? Begging for mercy?" He suggested meekly.

The man glanced at his rifle, which was still aimed at a spot uncomfortably close to Brian's head.

"What, you think I'm going to shoot you?" Somewhere behind him, in the dense, opaque cloud, something made a sound like a fifty-pound, rabid cat giving birth to a large litter of kittens. The man didn't seem perturbed. "Relax, man. This is just a whatchyacallit, a precaution, see? Just don't pull out your own."

Brian was at a loss; should he ask the guy to put his gun away (politely, of course), get to his feet (the steel was wreaking havoc on his kneecaps), or ask exactly what the hell was going on? He elected for the two latter options, eliciting a shrug from the gunman.

"The hell should I know what that crazy bitch is up to now? I just get paid to make sure nothing gets stolen."

"So...this is the right place? Craterside Supply?" The sign out front, scrawled as sloppily as a kindergartner's finger painting, had told him that much, but Brian felt the need to confirm that he was in fact really in the right madhouse.

The guard was nodding.

"Yeah, yeah. Moira's in back, you can't miss her."

"What's all this smoke?"

The guard waved a hand, which made the assault rifle bounce and jiggle terrifyingly.

"Dunno exactly. I think she spilled one of her experiments, or some shit. Probably not toxic like last time, though," He added quickly, mistaking the perplexed look on Brian's face.

"Okaaaay...and she's somewhere in the cloud?" Brian asked tentatively.

Another nod, this time accompanied by a pointed thumb.

"Feel free to interrupt her, or whatever, she always wants to talk to customers." He muttered something under his breath along the lines of, "_hope she doesn't expect me to clean up all the blood."_

"Sorry?"

"Nothing. Right in back, man."

_Hooboy. This better be worth the pay, Simms. _Brian clamped his nose shut with two fingers and waded into the cloud. The guard was right; he couldn't have missed Moira. Not if he had tried.

"HYAAA!" The axe made a meaty _thwack _when it struck the whatever-it-was—Brian couldn't make it out, not with the carpet of smoke— and a blood so black it looked like ink speckled the sleeves of her RobCo jumpsuit. Her shoulders heaved with exhaustion, but the fury on her face was wildly energetic, enthusiastic, even as she slid the weapon out, slung it over her shoulder, and brought it back down for another _thwack_.

"TAKE THAT! AND THAT!"

Brian made a small sound between a squeak and a moan. Moira didn't notice.

"I LOVED YOU! I RAISED YOU! I MADE YOU WHAT YOU ARE TODAY! AND YOU TRY TO EAT MY CUSTOMERS?! I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE—"

"Ummm…" _Dammit, stop making noise! _Brian ordered his agape jaw. He tried to sidle back into the cover of the fog as stealthily as he could, but to no avail. Moira glanced up sharply, and her furor evaporated like dew in the Sahara (or, he supposed, whatever freakshow was left of the Sahara post-war). A radiant smile lit up her blood-spattered face.

"Oh, hello there! Are you here to buy, or sell?" She noticed his aghast expression , and immediately put his concerns to rest. "Oh, how dreadful this mees must look! I'm sorry, I PROMISE the smoke isn't toxic. Just a little...reaction with the acid I kept in the CENTAUR'S CAGE!" She screamed at the thing beneath the smoke. She winked cheerily at him.

"Pets, am I right? So, buying or selling?"

Brian's mouth flapped wordlessly for a few seconds before he remembered what it was like to speak English.

"Um...neither…"

"Ooh! Repairs, then! That is just _groovy_! Y'know, most people consider me a boring old shopkeeper, but I like to think of myself as more of a tinkerer, a, a_visionary_, y'know?"

"I actually came for the research job...Lucas Simms sent me?" _WHY ARE YOU NOT RUNNING?! _He screamed inwardly. Yet somehow, his feet had been cemented to the floor.

Moira's smile, already painfully huge, swelled to inhuman proportions.

"Oh! He sent you? That's great!" She took in the dirty jumpsuit, the bleached skin, and, of course, his height. Her face fell considerably. "Oh...he sent _you_? That's, ah, that's _great!_"

_Exactly. Which is why I shouldn't be here. Yes, I'm reasonably certain that anywhere _but _here would be an excellent place to be right now! _Sang lefty.

But something inside him—the same part of him that had gotten tight when Simms called him a smart kid—bade him respond.

"Let me guess: I don't meet your expectations?" Brian prompted, prying the corner of his lip up in his best semblance of a smile. Moira had the decency to look a little abashed.

"What? No, no! I was just expecting somebody a little, I mean you know…"

"...Taller?" He suggested innocently.

"Well...yes."

"I promise you I am just as capable of doing research as anybody of a greater height. Now, could you tell me exactly what the hell it is you need doing already?" Brian hadn't meant for it to come out quite so harshly, and he bit his tongue in frustration.

Moira, thankfully, mistook his impatience for enthusiasm, which rekindled her own buoyancy.

"Well...where to begin? I suppose...I'm going to need your help to save the world!" She looked at him expectantly, as though he was supposed to grin and pump her hand enthusiastically.

_The caps. I need the caps, or I'll be starving by this time tomorrow. _

"Do go on," he said, trying not to sound too unenthusiastic.

Moira fidgeted uncomfortably, hugging her axe close for comfort, as though she hadn't expected to have to defend her answer.

"You may have noticed, the Wasteland's not a very safe place…"

Brian thought of that ant's gnashing pincers, of Silver and the blood soaking into his shoe, hell, of the woman wielding a bloody axe not five feet in front of him.

"I've noticed, yeah."

"Well, I was thinking to myself one day; 'Moira, you're a clever girl. And you have access to a lot of information most folks don't! So why don't you put that wonderful brain of yours to good use and _help_ folks?' And so I came up with the greatest idea ever— a Wasteland Survival Guide!"

He stared at her blankly. She plowed onwards.

"I'd do the research myself, but after a teensy accident with a domesticated centaur—" She gestured to the thing, still thankfully obscured by that carpet of smoke, "—I decided that my efforts would be better spent on the _writing _side of the book business! So that's what you'd be researching!"

"Wait, you want me to research how to survive in the Wastes?" His hesitation must have spoken volumes, because Moira rushed to reassure him.

"Just minor, silly things, you know! Absolutely no chance of you getting hurt! Cross my heart!" She really did cross her heart, placing one hand over her breast and forming an _X_ with the shaft of the Axe.

"Plus, I can pay you!" She added, perhaps seeing how Brian fidgeted.

_Money, money, I need to eat..._muttered Lefty.

_She's swinging a bloody axe around! Why is this even a question!? _Snapped Righty.

_Because starving is bad, and is an inevitability without financial income, _Lefty reasoned as the left hemisphere will.

Really, she had had him at "pay".

Moira briefed him; She needed him to check out the "Super-Duper Mart", an old grocers that had been around since the bombs fell. It sounded pretty simple, actually: find any food and/or medicine in the place that hadn't been taken by scavengers, bring it to Moira, and she would pretend she had actually researched it herself.

_And here I thought I would be digging up Old World history. 'Research,' huh, Simms? More like a glorified errand boy._

But he thought it best to keep silent and live to complain another day.

"So, what'll you pay me?"

"Hmm? Well, I'll buy the food from you for a fair price, plus anything else you can find that's worth the caps."

"So...I'm only getting paid if I can find something?"

"Yep! Should motivate you to look _really _hard, huh!" She chuckled good-naturedly. Brian was not quite so amused.

He was about to offer his hand to Moira, before remembering that hers was still slick with the "domestic" creature's blood. So, he simply nodded tersely and turned on his heel.

As he passed the guard, he thought he heard him say, "hope you last longer than the last one, buddy", but Brian pretended that was just a figment of his imagination.

After all, whatever else the shop smelled of, it _stank _of money.

* * *

><p>He trekked for a mile over the broken roads. Two hundred years had passed since the bombs fell, but apparently nobody had gotten around to cleaning up yet. The Capital Wasteland(the name was starting to stick in his mind now) was littered with leftovers from history class— the charred wreckage of a car here, a shattered office complex there, and skeletons grinning everywhere.<p>

From the windows, or half tucked in the ground like children at bedtime, or even just lying on the road like they had settled down for a lazy afternoon nap.

Brian spied a pack of dogs fighting in the distance. One slavering jaw was wrapped around a pelvic bone. Two more were fighting over the ribcage.

Hmmph. He had wondered how the dogs had stayed fed.

Brian almost threw up for the second time that day, caught himself, and kept walking. Moira had marked the place on his Pip's map. He wasn't far now.

_Just past that collapsed bridge, take a turn at the small skeleton garden, hang a right at the smell of burning tires, and your destination is on the left. _

Brian rushed towards the Super-Duper mart when it came into view—a giant sign, which was somehow intact, announced was something hanging from one of the streetlights. Brian had to squint, the sun was bright today. What was that, some kind of plant? It was all gray and ragged, and it smelled—

Brian finally made out the shape, and his heart slid into his bowels so quickly he just about shat it out.

_Holyshitholyshitholyshit…_

The body (could it still be considered a body if it had been dismembered? Brian would have to ask his dad about that one) was old enough to stink, but beyond that Brian couldn't much tell, because most of it's face had been ripped off, bits of skull baked yellow by that bright, bright sun. As had one of its legs. And both arms. And it's heart, if that black cavity in it's chest was as empty as it looked. Bones protruded at odd angles from what was left of the skin.

What ever had done this to the man—was it a man, or had the breasts been torn away too?—had left the body looking like some roadkill that had been left to the vultures.

_Dogs. Probably just dogs. Please, please just be dogs, _whimpered Righty.

_Sure, yeah, _Lefty snorted, _because the dogs decided they were full when the shmuck was half chew-toy, and then hung him from a streetlight in case they wanted leftovers. Seems about right._

The world was shaking, and Brian felt dizzy. He tried to take his pulse—that normally did the trick— but he couldn't because when he lifted his fingers to his neck his heart was moving too quickly to count.

Brian counted down from twenty, took a deep breath, and tore his gaze away, desperate to look anywhere else, at _anything else_—

Which is when he realized that there were more bodies hanging—_literally hanging_— around. Two more, to be exact. Both of them had been suspended with chains from their hips, and revolved in the wind like macabre mobiles. They were in much the same state as the last corpse, except…

...except, Jesus Christ, where were their _heads_?!

It was the single most surreal thing Brian had ever seen in his life. It was beyond words. Somebody had to have done this, and they must have done it for _some _reason, right?

_Corpses. Just think of them as corpses. Just meat, is all they are now._

Who? Who the hell would even _bother _to do something like, like..._that_?

_And why?_

For once in his life, Brian couldn't supply an answer.

He took a deep breath and started to walk towards the door. They were just bodies. Just meat, great big sacks of calcium and iron and carbon, yes, that was the way to think about it! Chemistry, everything was chemistry! There was no chemical difference between a dead body and a living one. Just numbers and atoms, all floating together in the cosmic soup.

His breath steadied.

He reached the door.

He allowed himself a shaky smile, and let himself in.

Which is about when Brian realized he was a colossal idiot. Despite what his G.O.A.T. scores said.

It wasn't his fault, really. He was in shock. Under the circumstances, anybody might have done the same thing.

"What the fuck...don't move!"

The second gun barrel he was staring down in an hour, and somehow Brian felt this one really _was _aimed at him.

_And why would anybody hang excessively mutilated bodies outside a building? _He rebuked himself as he lifted his hands above his head. _Gee, I don't know. Maybe because they were marking their territory, and trying to tell people to STAY THE HELL AWAY?! _

It's amazing the revelations that come when there's a rifle pointed at one's head.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN: See? Within a week, on the nose, and a much shorter chapter, too. You're welcome. You can thank me by leaving a REVIEW. REVIEWS help me improve my writing by reinforcing what I'm doing right and alerting me as to what I'm not doing well. Plus I'll respond to every single REVIEW humanly possible. **_

_**Next chapter should be up either in a week or a week and a half, depending on the high school curriculum. Averaged against how many REVIEWS I get. Hint, hint.**_


	5. The Lone Wanderer

_**A/N: Hey! Sorry this took so long to get up...but here y'all are. I want to give a big, big thanks to all the people that reviewed me, while I may not go back and edit my old chapters (because, christ, I need to sleep sometime) the feedback was invaluable to my writing in general and hopefully you see a lot less errors in this chapter. :) Thanks to the folks who think my story's worth following, and thank you for reading.**_

* * *

><p>The Lone Wanderer<p>

* * *

><p>The woman, wearing bits and pieces of salvaged motorcycle, nudged Brian forward with her rifle, one foot at a time, like a pirate forcing a victim to walk the plank. One of those stupid cartoons Brian had watched in diapers.<p>

What was it Moira had said?

_(__Absolutely no chance of you getting hurt!)_

"Faster," she snapped, jabbing the business end of the weapon in between his shoulder blades. _Hydrogen...Helium...Lithium…._

The room was the biggest he'd ever been in, at least three times the size of the Vault atrium, and he would have needed at least a few more pairs of eyes to absorb exactly how terrible it was. Fluorescents sputtering nauseously. Shelves, stripped of their contents and shoved rudely out of place to form a maze of aisles.

Oh, and there were some more bodies, too, hanging from the roof like ugly fruit from a tree. Brian dimly noted that he could smell these ones; these were older, then. If the corpses outside were a message, what were these? Decoration?

"Fucking faster, I said!" Her boot connected sharply with his back, and sent him sprawling to the disgusting linoleum.  
><em>Lithium! Beryllium! Boron! Please, God, if you exist…<em>

Brian felt a solid chunk of metal beneath his thigh when the floor slapped against him. The pistol! The pistol, he had grabbed it before leaving in case he ran across an ant! And it was sitting in his pocket. If he could pull it without her noticing...

He had fired it perhaps five times in his life. Never at somebody who was holding their own gun on him. A long shot, but all he needed was for her to look away for two seconds...

_Carbon! Nitrogen! Oxygen! _

And then he heard the footsteps. But not from behind him; from his left, his right, in front of him, at least three pairs.

_No. No._

"What've we got 'ere, eh?" Brian could hear the cigarettes in his voice.

"Fresh meat!" answered a second voice, to his left. gleeful.

"You shoulda seen 'im," the woman behind him cackled, her voice cracking like glass. "Dumbass walked right in, like he fuckin' owned the place!" She punctuated this with a quick kick to Brian's ribs, just to make sure everybody knew exactly which dumbass she meant.

"What, he didn't see the last guys who tried to take our shit?" The smoker rasped.

"The hell should I know? Maybe his Mommy dropped him on his head when he was a baby."

There was chuckle, but not from any of the voices he had heard so far. Other voices fell away when this one rose. "Get up, bitch."

Brian rose slowly, his hands behind his head. The room swam around him, and Brian tried to count.

There were five of them. Wait; no; more were streaming out of those aisles, from the hallways, spilling from the shadows. And then more. And more.

_No. Oh, no._

There were ten of them, looking at him hungrily, rifles and pistols clicking at their sides.

Brian tried to take stock of them, to find something familiar or understanding in their faces, something he recognized, but they all looked the same. Dirt clinging to skin like sweat. Broken, rotting smiles and clothes that rattled when they walked. Eyes like fires that had burned themselves down to nothing but embers.

And the track marks. Like freckles on a redhead.

_Raiders. That's what Simms said they were called, right? Raiders, that's who these guys are! Great! Excellent, now I know what they're called! Isn't that GODDAMN WONDERFUL?!_

The biggest, filthiest one, five inches taller than Brian and twice as wide around the shoulders, asked the questions. "What's your name, bitch?"

Brian's mind ran in circles for a few seconds. What the hell _was _his name?

The guy raised his eyebrow (he only had the one; the other looked like it had been singed off somehow) and raised his hands as though in welcome.

"Speak up, bitch. Unless you like me calling you bitch, bitch."

"Hey Jack, maybe," tittered the one who'd caught him, "maybe his Mommy dropped him on his—"

Jack's eyes flitted to her, and his growl echoed through the room. "You said that already."

She squeaked an apology, and ducked behind one of her friends.

Jack returned his gaze to the quivering wreck.

"Well? Did she?" The raider cocked his head.

Brian heard his own voice from a few miles away. "What? Who?"

And then Jack's face was mere inches away.

"Did. Mommy," he breathed slowly, " drop you on your head?"

Brian swallowed.

"I...uh...no. I don't have a Mother. Never had…" His voice faltered. _Keep him talking. Look at those eyes, he can barely see you, he's more out of it than Silver was! _

At least, Brian hoped that's what he saw when he looked in Jack's eyes.

"...never had a Mother. She died when I was born." He finished.

Jack's eyes glittered.

"Whatcha know. Mine died, two." One meaty hand slid onto Brian's shoulder, and Brian froze beneath it. Jack noticed. His voice was as hoarse as a corpse's whisper.

"Are you...scared of me? Is that why you talk so funny, huh? Are you scared of me? Are you scared I'll do you like I did them, is that it?" He gestured to the grisly ornaments hanging from the ceiling.

Brian's heart jumped into his mouth. He forced himself to smile.

"S-s-s-scared of y-you? N-n-not at all."

Jack smiled, and made a sound that might have been a laugh. Brian laughed with him.

_Do I run, or just walk away?_

Luckily, though, he was spared having to make the choice because Jack unslung the rusty crowbar tied to his back and smashed Brian's skull into a thousand pieces like an eggshell beneath a hammer.

Or, at least, that's what it felt like. There was too much screaming— some of which probably came from him— pounding in his eyes and _somebody was banging church bells inside his skull._

Miraculously, he wasn't concussed. He could tell, because he felt a bone crack in his ribcage when the crowbar came down a second time.

Brian screamed a little louder. He tasted blood where he had bitten his tongue.

"Well," the huge raider was saying, "you should be." He bent down, and seized Brian by the scruff of his neck, and then Brian was flying. The world spun, and a shelf rushed towards him—

— and, oh christ, the entire left side of his face felt soggy with blood.

"Holy crap! Did you see that? Musta been five feet!" This from the smoker. Other raiders muttered agreement. Out of the corner of his eye, Brian saw Jack's bare chest swell with satisfaction.

_**Crick. Crack. **_

If Jack felt the broken glass under his bare feet, he didn't show it on his face as he approached.

Brian tried to brace himself against the shelf, but his legs slipped out from under him, and then he was sitting again. The raiders were laughing, enjoying the bit of entertainment on what must have been a dull day so far.

Jack reached for him...and stopped. "Your name. You never told me your name. Who are you?"

His eyes darted to the door, then back to Brian.

"Who sent you? Was it Billy? Who the fuck are you working for?"

Brian considered lying just to spite him. _No. If I lie, I am dead for certain. I can get out of this. _

He remembered the wonder of destroying the bomb. He remembered Silver's blood soaking his shoe.

_I _must _get out of this. _

"Well?" Snapped an impatient Jack. "Talk! I fucking asked you to talk, talk, talk—" The corner of his left eye was starting to twitch.

"I'm alone," Brian gasped. "I was… was just wandering. I'm just a, just a lone wanderer. Please, please don't hurt me—" he trailed off when he realized Jack had tilted his head again.

"Please don't hurt you," he said slowly, tasting the unfamiliar words. "Because you're just a lone wanderer. You're just a lone, lonely wanderer." He spoke so softly, so carefully, Brian thought for a second that the drugs may have just saved his life.

Then he realized Jack was laughing. Not like Moriarty's laugh, so maliciously mirthful, and certainly not like Simms's rumbling chuckle, like the entire earth moving with laughter.

Jack's laugh was tinny and high, a dry wheeze that sounded like something diseased. It was a faint sound, a tiny noise for a big man.

"D'you hear that, guys? Don't hurt him! Please, please don't hurt him!" Jack glared over his shoulder at the raiders, wheezing softly all the while.

They took the hint, and started laughing with him.

They laughed, and Brian hung his head, defeated,

"He's just a wanderer, please don't—" one of them was saying in a falsetto.

Jack stopped laughing. "I SAID THAT ALREADY! DUMBASS!"

The cardboard laughter stopped.

The offending raider cleared his throat. "Shit, man. Didn't mean no offense or nuthin', I just—" He crumpled under Jack's glare.

Jack turned back to Brian. Giving one last chuckle, he gestured at the bodies hanging from the ceiling. "See, wanderer? Most of 'em were alone, too." Out of the corner of his eye, Brian saw a sledgehammer fist, and then he saw only red, starry flashes.

"'ey! Don't kill 'im yet!" cried one of the raiders behind him. "We've still got a streetlight outside, 'aven't we?"

"The fuck are you talkin' bout?" Jack snarled without breaking pace as he aimed a kick at Brian's crotch. "We can take his stuff after. His body'll keep after I'm done, it's not like anybody will be able to tell the difference once we string him up."

Brian managed to spit enough blood out of his mouth to speak.

"Wait, WAIT, don't—"

"_Shut up! WANDERER MOTHERFUCKER!" _Another blow from the crowbar, this time on his leg. Another scream that didn't sound like his voice, but it tasted like his blood and his tears as it ripped its way out of his throat.

Titters, like those of schoolgirls, flitted through the small circle.

"I want his shoes," one of them said suddenly.

"What? _Bullshit_. I already called dibs!" This from across the circle.

"If she gets his shoes, I want the bag!" Cried the one who caught him.

"The fuck you do! Why, so you can snort whatever he's got inside?"

"Oh, like you won't? My catch, I get—!"

"ALL OF YOU, SHUT! THE FUCK! UP!" Jack shrieked. He stepped over Brian, brandishing the crowbar like a knife. "SHUTPSHUTUPSHUTUP—"

"Shut up." Brian snarled.

The room froze. Jack's shoulders hunched, and he turned around. He blanched when he found himself staring down the barrel of Brian's pistol.

"Shit…" For a second, just a second, he looked more uncertain than angry. Jack took a slow step backwards.

Brian's chest heaved. It had taken all his strength to get to his feet without screaming. In his just-about-professional opinion, the jacked-up bastard had broken at least a rib or two, and chipped a tooth while he was at it. His leg felt like it was bent the wrong way, and a trickle of blood rolled down his forehead and over one eyelid, squeezed firmly shut.

He had the room. He could taste their shock, Jack's panic, the hesitance of the raiders behind him to save their leader. For a second, just a second, they were scared to so much as blink.

_Now or never. _

Brian exhaled, levelled the gun, and squeezed the trigger.

_**Click**_**.**

Jack blinked, as did everybody else in the room.

Brian stared at the gun, then at the very, very surprised group of psychopaths. Then back at his gun.

He swallowed.

Then he dropped the useless weapon and limped as quickly as humanly possible into the first aisle he saw.

Later, he would realize he had forgotten to turn off the safety.

* * *

><p>He ducked through the first aisle he saw, then made another turn into the next one.<p>

Rinse and repeat. He scurried through the maze like a lab rat.

He could hear them, finally snapping out of whatever daze they'd been in and giving furious pursuit. They spread throughout the store, screaming a crazed mix of vulgarity and death threats.

Brian would bump into one every once in a while as they searched the aisles, before running in the opposite direction and doubling back as fast as he could.

"There! He's there, I saw him!"

"Open wide, asshole!" There was the _**crack**_ of gunfire, and Brian nearly shat himself.

"Hey, that's me, dumbass!" Someone cried, furious.

"Well, stop running so fuckin' fast—"

" I WANT HIS _SHOES_!"

_Keep moving. Just keep moving. _He thought wildly.

He wasn't sure how, but he made it out of the deathtrap maze without being spotted. He ducked behind a low counter, tucked in the corner of the room. He tried the door behind it, frantically, but it wouldn't give. There was no lock.

_Dammit! _

Then he gave a double take at the terminal next to the door.

_Yes! Yes! _

Terminals, he loved terminals! He would hack into his Dad's computer just for fun!

And if there wasn't a keyhole in the door, then there would be one in the machine.

He booted the machine up, praying to the God he didn't believe in that none of the monsters in the maze of aisles would glance in his directions.

He sifted through the machine's memory banks, searching, searching for a phrase, something to open the database up.

Brian had spent a lot of time on his father's computer. It took him maybe thirty seconds to break this one open.

He entered the password he had found. _Dessert. _Of course. He was in a grocers, after all.

And in the computer proper, an option to disengage the door's lock.

_I did it. _His heart started to pound.

"HEY! OVER THERE! HE'S OVER THERE—"

He clicked furiously on the option, and was panicked for half a second when nothing happened. Then…

_**Hiss**_**. **

_Move, move…! _

He yanked the door open and slammed it behind him just as the first gunshots rang out. The door started to bulge and scream where bullets struck steel. The deadbolts _**hissed **_as they slipped back into place. The storeroom spun, and Brian found himself on his back, blood pouring into his eye from the gash on his forehead. His chest told him loudly that it wanted to implode inwards on the cracked ribs.

Eventually—it could have been years or half a second for all Brian could tell, because the bells inside his head hadn't stopped ringing quite yet—the onslaught stopped. The door, somehow, was still standing.

Silence, almost. Except for the fading battle cries of the monsters outside.

An argument, somehow carried out in whispers bad enough for him to hear it all the way in here.

Brian tried to move his legs, but found he couldn't, not without setting his nerves on fire.

"Fucking..._ow…_" he croaked. His throat was hoarse. He didn't swear often, but he figured he had earned that one.

Footsteps, outside his haven. A rapping at the door. Almost polite, but somehow worse than the bullets.

Just like Silver. Except now he was on the wrong side of the door.

"WANDERER! WHATEVER THE FUCK YOUR NAME IS!"

Jack needn't yell; Brian could see his bare, bloody feet through the bottom of the door.

"Yes?" he croaked, from the floor.

"FUCK YOU!" The psychopath seemed to have forgotten what he wanted to say.

Then, slowly; "Come on out, bitch. There's only two doors in that stupid room, and they both open up in the store, so you're dead either way. If you stay in there, you'll starve. Come out, give us the chance to loot you, and I'll make it quick. Cap you in the head, before we string your ass up outside."

The wonderful thing about being paralyzed with agony is that it makes it fairly easy to decide where to go.

"Um...yeah. As tempting of an offer as that is..." Brian hacked up some more blood. "...I think I'll have to refuse. Maybe you should have left me a leg to stand on. Plus, I'm thinking I'd rather die in here than give you the satisfaction of hanging me up like a sign." He waited a second before adding, thoughtfully, "Bitch."

The stream of vulgarity issuing through the door did Brian more good than a choir of angels.

"I want his sho-" one voice complained in the background.

"SHUT! UP!" Jack bellowed. He slammed his fist into the steel door a few more times,

Brian waited. He could wiggle his toes, so yippee—no nerve damage. It was shock, that was all. Setting in after adrenaline had taken its leave, leaving him with his body a wreck.

Fitting, that he should die the day after becoming a murderer.

* * *

><p>Outside the storeroom, Jack finished pounding the door. His knuckles felt like he had run them through a cheese grater. He snarled through the door, furious.<p>

"Okay, fine. You want to fuck with me, fine! Just remember,asshole, I was going to be _nice_. I was going to kill you _quickly_!"

No response.

Oh, now he was getting _really _pissed.

He jerked his head towards the girl, the one who kept complaining about the shoes.

"The grenades. In the ammo box, we've got some of those frags, remember? Get them. Now."

"What?" Johnny, the guy standing to his right, stared at him. "You wanna waste one of the frags? On this dumbass? Fuck that, man! He's dead anyway, you said so yourself."

"I said, get the frags. And some Psycho, too."

"Man, we may as well just leave him—"

That was as far as Johnny got before Jack pulled his pistol free and decorated the wall behind Johnny with little bits of skull and brain matter. The corpse slumped against the wall, Johnny's eyes half-lidded, trying to blink in surprise.

"THE FRAGS! NOW!"

This time, nobody argued.

Jack watched them scurry for the makeshift armory. He turned and screamed through the door.

"YOU HEAR THAT, BITCH?! I'M GONNA BLOW YOU OPEN AND HANG WHATEVER'S LEFT FROM THE FUCKIN' ROOF!"

* * *

><p>Brian heard him. He had been moving since the word "grenades" had been first uttered.<p>

Brian had read about those, more for fun than anything else. Nasty weapons.

It's amazing how the threat of imminent death could get somebody to _move_. There was simply _no time _to panic.

_Crap, think. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium…_

He shoved himself to his feet. He had to leave the room, leave it before they brought out the explosives. The room was wide enough that he _might _survive the blast, but the shrapnel was another story entirely. Plus, he would then be trapped in a small room with a bunch of armed psychotics. No, thank you.

So, he had to get out...but he was unarmed. Brian looked around the room, desperate for something, anything, to use as a weapon. There was nothing, nothing but metal crates and Nuka-cola lining the shelves…

...and then his eyes landed on the thing in the back of the room. Another terminal, and next to it...

"Oh," he croaked weakly to himself. "I guess that could work."

* * *

><p>Jack tossed the grenade a foot into the air, then caught it again, admiring the way the pin jingled. His fingers caressed the ridges of the frag, exploring it like a toddler with a new toy.<p>

"How many do we have?" He asked the raider who had tossed it to him underhand.

"Two others after that one."

Jack let out a low whistle, and set the little ball of death down for a second. He picked up the syringe somebody had passed him, full of shit so green it looked like the radioactive sludge that you sometimes could find around the Wastes.

But that didn't make the Psycho any less delicious.

He bared his arm, veins struggling against his slab of a bicep, and traced the track marks all along the twisting black snakes.

_And...there_.

A fresh spot.

The needle slid in, prompting a fresh dollop of blood to well out…but it all changed when he pushed the plunger. For a moment, the pain just got worse; he felt like he had just sliced his head open, every cut and bruise splitting like it was fresh, like he had taken a bath in iodine.

And then everything else became...better.

He could feel his fury, always simmering, fan into an inferno. He could feel his heart buck, like somebody had torn it out of his chest, injected some Nuka Quantum, and jammed it right back between his ribs.

_Stupid, stupid wanderer...thought you could run from me? Make me look stupid in front of my friends? _

He could feel himself get hard, too. He should pay Silver a visit down in Springvale, she would suck him off for some of the extra jet...but that could wait. He had another bitch to deal with.

He snatched the frag and raised it behind his back.

_Shouldn't have made me angry. Shouldn't have lied to me. Shouldn't have come here._

He realized he was shaking; quivering with anticipation. He couldn't wait. Not another second.

"OPEN WIDE, BEE—"  
>The door opened.<p>

"—ATCH…" Jack found his hand hanging in midair, his fingers still wrapped around the grenade.

The Wanderer stood in the doorway, the short bastard even shorter when he was leaning on a makeshift crutch to stay upright.

Something about the sight gave him pause.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He heard himself asking. Something felt...wrong. Like a screw loose in the universe.

The Wanderer took a shaking step forward.

"You know there's no way out, right, dumbass?"

Behind him, Jack heard the clicks of rifles reloading, of pistols cocking.

He held up a hand. His heart would probably explode out of his chest if he didn't tear out the Wanderer's throat himself.

"Did you hear me, bitc-"

"I heard you." Another step. He was just barely outside the room now. "And I told you…"

Jack caught a glimpse of the thing behind the Wanderer's twisted figure. He felt air whistling through his nostrils and his lungs as he breathed sharply. His boner disappeared with disturbing alacrity.

"What the fuck is _that_—"

"I told you." The Wanderer spoke softly, quietly, as a dead man. "I'd rather die than give you the satisfaction of finishing me." Behind him, there was the groaning, creaking shriek of a steel...something...stepping forward.

Jack realized what that shape was, and his blood froze so solid that all the Psycho in the world couldn't get it pumping again.

_No, no…_ He heard himself screaming, rage and terror spilling into adrenaline, as he hurled the grenade overhead, his finger slipping the pin out as it left his grasp.

* * *

><p>Brian hurled himself to the right, where he thought there was the smallest chance of a stray bullet ending him.<p>

Not a small chance. Just the smallest chance.

He wrapped his hands over his head and ears, and tried, failed, to block the world out.

He felt the blast of the grenade shake the floor. Something rushed overhead, and Brian felt the heat, something metal aflame. It landed somewhere in front of him, clanging against the floor.

_If I were standing, that would have taken my head off, _he thought. He burrowed deeper, into the wet, bloody sleeves of his jumpsuit. The screams were the worst part. He couldn't escape them, no matter how far he burrowed for cover in his arms.

Every second, another _**thrum **_from the cannon, another shriek, another _**hiss**_ from somewhere in the room.

Nobody shot at him. They were too busy dying. A frantic burst of gunfire rang out every few seconds, but none of it was precise or concentrated. It was the fire of a madman, the last bark of a cornered dog. The monstrosity not five feet from him positively radiated heat.

Then the noises stopped.

The room had started to smell like something burning, and it wasn't metal.

The room stank of roasting flesh.  
>Brian opened his eyes, grabbed his "crutch," (it was just the leg of a table he had found broken in the storeroom) and used it to push himself upright.<p>

The ashes were everywhere. Like the fake snow the Vault used for Christmas.

Except, these were seething. A snowball made from these would leave you choking, screaming, and crying just to try to cool your scarred flesh.

He turned, staring at his savior. It was almost as short as he was; Five and a half feet of steel, a body like a steel barrel, and a bulletproof glass dome where its head should be. The laser cannons that ended either arm were smoking lightly.

"All Combatants neutralized," The Protectron buzzed in its monotone. "The Super-Duper Mart is safe for business..once...more…" The glass dome that housed its optics stared ahead, as emotional and interested as a fresh corpse.

Brian should know. There were ten scattered around the room.

_How the hell am I still alive? _ When he had seen the robotic guard in its chamber, he had thought it a cinch to reactivate it, to reprogram its facial recognition software into recognizing him as an employee, a friendly… and then it would do the rest.

The scary part was, he had been right. It had been easy, too goddamned easy. He had only needed a few minutes.

And everything had gone perfectly to plan, hadn't it?

This is what he had intended, right?

He stared at the linoleum, so stark and grimy against the bodies, like islands in a sea of ashes and drying blood.

"Jesus…" Had he really leapt from killing one person to killing ten?

_In one day? HOW THE HELL IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE!?_

He sank to his knees, shaken by the magnitude of the slaughter, of how _quickly _everything had gone to hell. A few lines of code, a couple minutes of action, maybe thirty seconds of planning, and then...ten bodies, smouldering on the floor.

And him, still standing. He hadn't planned on that part.

Where was the karma? Where was the justice? Where was everything Dad talked about when he talked about Mom?

Where was Brian?

How could he have done this?

But it wasn't terror, or horror, or even guilt he felt when he looked at the bodies.

Just...relief. That was what that feeling, that little tap-dance his heart did was, right?

Sure. He was just...relieved.

_Forget about them, _Lefty said.

_But...bodies! For Heaven's sake!_ Righty complained.

_You came here for a reason, Brian. Focus. _Lefty insisted.

The food. The medicine. If there were any to be had, and Brian wanted to be paid, he would have to search the place bottom to top. He was sure the monsters kept some sort of supply stockpile, right?

He ignored the small sea of death as best as he was able to, and searched.

It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.

"Holy crap…"

They had food. But more importantly, they had weapons, ammo, and meds. Enough to choke, shoot, and drug a horse all at the same time.

Their entire supply stockade had been heaped into an enclosed corner of the huge Mart, what might have been a sort of in-store deli before it had been nuked.

It was like finding the treasure in a dragon's lair.

Brian was so excited, he hardly even noticed all the corpses hanging through the roof.

It took him the greater part of an hour to get everything ready. After seizing a few stimpaks from the first-aid kits and numbing the worst of the pain with a healthy dose of morphine, Brian felt almost like his normal self again. His own knapsack wasn't large enough, so he borrowed some duffel bags from the bathrooms in the store, where it looked like his would-be murderers had set up camp. Brian would have felt odd about taking their things so casually, but he was floating on an intoxicating cloud of painkiller. He poured the crates of ammo (green boxes that looked suspiciously military in origin) into the bags, careful not to spill any of the lead, precious as gold, onto the linoleum.  
>When everything was packed up, Brian made one last round of the place to make sure he hadn't missed anything too valuable. He shivered when he saw the mess of ashes and corpses littering the floor, like some psychotic janitor's nightmare, but the morphine, at least, kept him from vomiting. Besides, he was rewarded for his efforts; he found two grenades lying abandoned on a shelf, miraculously undetonated despite the heat that had been flying around the room.<p>

Those had to be worth a pretty penny, right? Or a pretty bottlecap, anyway. He wondered how _that _had become the preferred medium of currency in the Wastes; He supposed it probably said something about the Old World's disgusting capacity for excess that even two centuries _after _it had been blasted out of existence, the bottle caps were still in circulation. Yes, it really was quite disturb—

Brian blinked. He stared around the graveyard, the graveyard _he _had created less than an hour ago, and counted.

And counted. And counted.

There had been ten of the monsters. He had counted when they surrounded him, and Brian _never _miscounted. It just didn't happen.

So why were there nine bodies scattered across the ground?

Brian didn't scream, or throw up, or piss himself.

_Must be the morphine_, Lefty reasoned.

* * *

><p>Half a mile away, on the remains of a bridge whose name nobody remembered, a filthy man wearing armor made from the salvage of an abandoned bus peered through his binoculars.<p>

When he saw the lumbering, staggering shape in the distance, he grinned, excited, and loaded his rifle. He was gonna shoot this guy's cock off, and hang it from the roof of the van he slept in. Wait 'till his crew got back from scavving the houses nearby, they'd laugh their asses off.

Humming, he set out to meet the poor asshole.

Closer, closer. The shape became a man, bent over his hip and gasping. The idiot was waving to him.

"Dumbass," Billy (that was the name he generally told people, and it was of his own choosing; he had been found in a dumpster playing with broken glass, and his "family" had never gotten around to actually naming him) muttered. He lined up the shot with the dumbass's head, and then blinked, because he realized he knew this dumbass.

"What the fuck—" Billy breathed.

"Help me...motherfu…" Jack was interrupted when he hacked up something that was more blood than phlegm. Parts of his skin had been baked black, and some of his hair was still smoking.

Billy thought about it, then shrugged. "Shit, man. Wish I could, but…"

Honestly, the raider boss had always been kind of a dick when Billy and his guys tried to trade with his crew. Plus, he was kind of enjoying the show. He wondered if Jack would bleed out first, or just die of the burns.

"Fuck...you…" Apparently, that last exclamation took all of Jack's strength. The raider sank to his knees, then collapsed face down.

Billy wrinkled his nose at the smell, and turned him over with his foot.

"Where's your crew, man? Shit, I thought you said you were rolling in meds and stuff—"

Jack said something, but his voice was like sandpaper.

"Can't hear you," said Billy, unapologetically. But he was a little curious, so he dropped to one knee to hear the guy out.

"...dead...all dead…" Another round of coughing. There was blood in his beard.

Billy whistled. "Dead? All of them? Did some new gang roll in? How many were there?" Maybe these new guys would give him a better price if he moved chems for them like he had for Jack.

"No gang...just…one..." More coughing.

A chill slid down Billy's spine like a frozen drop of blood.

"One guy? Are you fucking with me? One guy did this to you?"

Jack gargled, then spat out some more blood onto his chest.

"Fuck you, Billy. You piece of shit, standing there…" But stringing together such a coherent sentence was enough to leave him panting, his ruined, burned lungs starting to give out.

"Yeah, yeah, don't pretend you wouldn't do the same if I showed up at your door, huh? So are you seriously telling me _one _dude fucked all you guys up _this _hard? There's ten of you, aren't there?"

Jack tried to curse him out, but couldn't find the strength. He simply glared, trying to gather all his leftover hatred into his eyes.

Billy was unfazed. "Shit, man. Who's the badass?"

For some reason, Jack decided to answer him. Maybe because he wasn't sure he wholly believed it himself. He forced himself to make each word as clear as humanly possible.

"The Lone Wanderer, man. The Lone Wanderer killed us _all_."

Then one of his lungs gave out, worn to death by too much use. Billy watched, interested, as Jack drowned in his own blood.

Those words would be whispered around the campfire that night, as Billy's crew listened with bated breath, drunk and high and always aching for a good story.

"_The Lone Wanderer killed 'em all..."_

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN: I'll start working on Chapter six when I get home from Japan :) as always, feedback is adored and a big, big thanks to everybody who's following the story.**_


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